document management waldorf

The intellectual property of your business is vital to its continuing success. Therefore, it is important to ensure confidential documents are not susceptible to security breaches. Whether it is a computer virus or a disgruntled former employee, you need to ensure your information is safe from unauthorized viewers. Luckily, with document management systems, it is easy to integrate advanced security features into your current workflows. Electronic Document Management can help protect your documents and increase productivity. If you are unsure if a document management system is right for your business, here are ten things you should know about document security:

1. Document management seeks to prevent data loss from the various kinds of threats to data. Unless a systematic approach is adopted for document security your business could be shut down by a breach of security.

2. Very few businesses can survive a complete loss of business data. Even partial losses can prove extremely serious, especially to smaller businesses. Consider what would happen if you lost all your customer data and invoice records from a computer virus. It can render you unable to recover your fees from credit customers that can equal a few months of sales. Or consider the secret product formula that gives you an edge in the market being stolen.

3. Document security starts with an intricate look at all the risks documents face and the impact of each. A clear view can make upper management aware of the real dangers that can easily occur, and as a result they are more likely to support security-enhancement measures.

4. One of the primary security measures is preventing unauthorized access to documents. Only authorized persons should be able to access each type of data. Access restrictions should be placed both on classes of data and levels of employees and can be integrated easily with the access controls on your multifunction device.

5. All documents should generate automatic audit trails to monitor who accesses specific documents. Most data losses have been attributed to employees and it’s essential that a record of their activities is on file.

6. Firewalls and Antivirus programs can prevent access to data on the internal network by external entities, such as hackers and viruses. However these tools probably only scratch the surface for the security of your company’s data. Protecting individual workstations doesn’t necessarily mean all your documents are secure.

7. Verified backups and storage at separate locations can help the business recover from data losses caused by different events, such as natural disasters like a fire, accidental or intentional deletion of data from hard disks. Electronic Document Management will make it easy for you to have an alternate location for data storage.

8. Electronic Document Management will verify your backed-up data to ensure it is recoverable in case of need. Systematic policies and procedures can ensure that all critical data is backed up in an up-to-date or even real-time manner. In the absence of Electronic Document Storage, not all data may be backed up and data loss recovery can prove incomplete.

9. Electronic documents can be tampered with comparatively easily, but document management puts authentication procedures in place to validate critical documents at the recipient’s end. Features such as electronic signatures can help ensure that documents have not been altered since they were signed.

10. Above all, regular evaluations must be carried out to identify current security vulnerabilities. Electronic Document Management Systems provide easy to access interfaces to allow for constant optimization.

Standards for information security can help businesses understand the complex issues involved and implement best practices for document security. With increasing dependence on electronic documents, this is an issue that cannot be ignored or left to untrained staff. Luckily, an easy way to increase your document security is through an Electronic Document Management System. continue reading...

When considering the many costs that an organization has to expend, one of the most misunderstood is that of printing costs.

The Gartner Group estimates that as much as 30% of organizations' print costs can be eliminated with simple technology solutions.

The Business World is a rapidly changing entity, and technology helps adapt to these changes quickly and will help a company keep its competitive advantage. Paper has always been an inefficient medium for conducting business processes, and recently has become a key focus for Business Process Improvement (BPI) initiatives. So what are the main reasons for a company or organization to move towards the paperless environment?

Below are the two main categories:

1. Operation Efficiency and Business Process Improvement

Using a digital repository can improve productivity. This is an obvious benefit. Any time you can reduce the time required to perform a required task, that time can be applied elsewhere. A basic online search for a customer file requires about 5 seconds. To accomplish the same information lookup with a physical file cabinet can take 10 – 25 minutes, or perhaps even days if the file is held in offsite storage. This is just for basic lookups, and not complex searches, which could take weeks if performed through the physical file system.

2. Risk Reduction

An ECM/DM system allows for the backup of critical files. What would happen to an organization if their file room was destroyed by a fire or flood? Business Continuity Planning is a critical theme today, allowing an organization to insure that a disaster of any kind will not bring business to a halt. Scanning paper files provides the ability to backup and restore key business documentation. continue reading...