RightNOW26, the signature event of accounting cloud service provider Rightworks, kicked off this week in San Antonio, TX, where new innovations and partnerships were announced to help address the rapidly evolving threat landscape for the accounting profession.
The announcements were made during a mainstage cybersecurity session led by CEO Ian Williams and Chief Information Security Officer Anjan Bagchee.
Long known for its ability to assign role-based security levels to users, Rightworks on Tuesday announced new solutions that will enable firms to lock down both applications and devices. These new capabilities, together with existing identity and user role controls, deliver a comprehensive, multilayered approach to access control, redefining how accounting and tax firms secure access across teams, devices, and applications, the company said in a media release. By extending protection across who can access, what they can access, and where that access originates, Rightworks provides a unified security framework purpose-built for modern, distributed work environments.
“Security used to center on username and passwords; today it spans people, devices, systems, data, and AI working together,” Bagchee said in a statement. “Most firms are dealing with AI adoption that has outpaced AI governance; leaders often don’t know what tools their teams are using, what data is being entered into models, or how to establish oversight. We built these solutions to close that gap.”
Rightworks Outsourced Tax is the first use case where these capabilities come together, applying role-based permissions, device-level restrictions, and application-level controls to securely segment access to tax workflows without exposing the broader firm environment. With this three-tiered security approach, Rightworks enables firms to reduce risk, strengthen compliance, and confidently scale outsourced and flexible work models.
Spark AI built into OneSpace
Rightworks also announced that Spark AI is now available directly within OneSpace, the company’s secure cloud hosting platform. Built to Rightworks’ security and data protection standards, Spark AI gives accounting teams AI-powered assistance without introducing new risks.
Purpose-built for accounting and finance workflows, Spark AI accepts documents and data uploads across applications and uses that context to deliver relevant, informed responses—regardless of where the work originated. Because it runs entirely within the Rightworks platform, data never leaves the environment, and no prompts or attachments are used to train AI models.
“A human in the loop is essential as AI can sound confident but be factually wrong,” Rightworks CEO Ian Williams said in a statement. “Spark AI is designed to deliver a fast, informed first draft, not a final answer, keeping firms in control while eliminating the risk of external AI tools.”
Spark AI is designed to work with evolving large language models while maintaining a bias toward accounting expertise, helping firms avoid vendor lock-in and the limitations of generic AI, Rightworks says.
New outsourcing partnerships extend secure staffing capabilities
Alongside its product announcements, Rightworks introduced new partnerships with MyCPE One, Madras, and GKM, three established outsourcing and offshoring providers serving accounting firms across the U.S. These partnerships enable Rightworks customers to expand their teams for tax, accounting, bookkeeping, audit, and back-office functions through staffing partners that meet Rightworks’ security standards and integrate directly with the OneSpace platform, the company says. All three partners are participating at RightNOW26.
In his mainstage remarks, Williams framed the announcements within a broader call to action for firm leaders, encouraging them to treat security as a leadership responsibility rather than an IT task, design their organizations for a distributed workforce, and pursue technology partnerships that address both present needs and future evolution.
“The firms that win in the next decade won’t be the ones that avoided change,” Williams said. “They’ll be the ones that stayed in control as everything changed. That’s the future we are building at Rightworks—we believe firms can scale securely, and with confidence.”
RightNow26 concludes on May 20.
Photo credit: Rightworks/LinkedIn
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