Our friends over at business.com compiled an excellent list of the top three elements of digitization to help ensure your business’s archives are safe, secure and easily accessible.

“Any business will generate important documents that must be stored either for internal operations, reference by clients or to comply with government regulations. In the past, filing cabinets typically lined the walls of every office. As technology has evolved, so, too, have document management methods. However, while document management might seem like a straightforward concept, there is often more to it than meets the eye.

Understanding how to properly establish and maintain a digital archive is critical to keeping your documents secure, accessible, and adaptable to your business’s needs. Document management can generally be broken down into three broad categories. Small businesses should carefully consider each category to ensure that company operations are streamlined, your critical files can be easily retrieved and that files are secure. These tips will help you get it right the first time.”

Want to read more? Check out business.com’s direct blog with this information written by Adam Uzialko.

Editor’s note: Looking for document management software for your business? Learn more in the rest of our blog where we share industry news from top sources leading today’s forward thinking business strategies. 

As a busy business owner, we know you want to stay in the loop when it comes to emerging technology and trends as they relate to streamlining your businesses operations. We here at ScanSearch make sure we compile all of the latest news and industry developments in one helpful place to keep up with your demanding schedule.

Our friends over at information & data manager aka idm.net are the authority when it comes to laying out defining principles and today we are going over their recommendations for Records Management Best Practices.

“Records management is rarely smooth sailing – it can often feel like you’re a tiny vessel in the middle of a sea of legislation. Just when you think you’re paddling in the right direction, a wave of legislation sends you reeling. Yet records management compliance needn’t be this difficult. Enterprises make it harder for themselves by treating records management as an afterthought, instead of an intrinsic part of their everyday operations. In this article we’ll discuss the nine rules for records management best practices for implementation in your organization.

1) Prioritise Security and Privacy

One of the first priorities for any business intent on getting its house in order regarding record-keeping, is to ensure strict data security and privacy measures are in place. If security is lax, your data could be vulnerable to a breach. A data leak could have huge monetary repercussions whilst also creating a host of PR problems. It is incumbent upon businesses to safeguard their records and treat client data and information with the security that it deserves.

Without the right security measures in place, cybercriminals can not only access your records but also install malware into your systems which could capture your clientele’s vital data. Responding to security alerts should be considered an integral part of records management best practices. Just recently, the Marriott hotel chain was subject to a data breach that resulted in details of 500 million guests being stolen, which could cost the company $US200 million.

Your electronic document and records management system (eDRMS) should have strong inbuilt security features to keep information secure, with encryption of data in transit through a strong SSL connection.

Accessibility is another key component of security and privacy, which can be broken down into two parts; appropriate user access levels within an organisation and discoverability/usability of information to support business activities. Organisations must ensure that sensitive, private or classified information can only be accessed by specific individuals with appropriate permissions.

Making information easy to find and use not only significantly impacts organisational efficiency, it is also one of the Digital Continuity Principles introduced by the National Archives of Australia to ensure digital information is discoverable, accessible and usable.

Processes and safeguards should also be in place to prevent any unauthorised destruction or deletion of registered physical and digital records as well as their associated metadata. Using an electronic document and records management system (eDRMS) will assist in recording, tracking and monitoring records.”

Want to read more? Head over to idm.net and check out Raelene Bennett’s expansive article that covers the rest of the principles you need to know in order to best handle your records management procedures.

What’s the best way to begin any digital transformation journey? Find a project that is achievable within one month, with the resources you have today, and that is of immediate value to the business.

That’s it. That’s your Plan A. Compare that with most digital transformation projects, which can take a year or more, require significant new headcount and resources, and whose value to the organization is an unproven projection. In our experience, keeping it simple and starting small is the best way to begin any digital transformation journey, not least because several teams can start small in parallel.

Alex McWilliam, Brand Contributor for GoogleCloud and Forbes.com has put together a compelling series detailing paths towards digital transformation within your business. Click here to read more and find out the best plan towards executing your streamlined business solutions.

“Records management can be a chore, especially for agencies with billions of active records. However, missing critical information, having conflicting information or not having documents in a digital format is incentive enough to take records management policies seriously. The tangible benefits of transparency, efficiency and accountability are well established and worth the effort.”

Wayne Starrs at DefenseSystems.com is a writer serious about records management compliance. He has written a great commentary on the benefits of selecting the right framework up front to handle your Management of DOD Records and any secure document.

The Department of Defense is serious enough about records management that its program calls for information and intellectual capital to “be managed as national assets” — i.e., with the proper effort and attention to best practices. This is true whether the information is being generated and stored physically or electronically. For records and information management, DOD agencies must consider the full information lifecycle, ensuring strategies in place apply to all information — both current and future — in digital and physical formats.

Click here to read Starrs’ full commentary.

When it comes to benefits that come with using a document management system, the list could be endless. Lucky for us, Mamoun Chaouni at business2community.com has laid out the top 7 most meaningful examples of advantages provided by DMS usage.

Gone are the days of spending countless hours finding that one document. Save time and energy by really taking control of your document workflow within your organization or agency today.

“Aside from helping keep trees upright to protect the environment from health and economic hazards such as pollution, landslides and flooding, employing a cloud-based document management software solution comes with a host of advantages.

1. Document/file repository

Cloud-based document management systems serve as a central repository for all your important documents that can subsequently be accessed, viewed, changed and shared with colleagues. No more wasting hours upon hours of precious time frantically looking through stacks of folders to find a single document.

2. Document/content security

When documents are not managed, the possibility of important information being exposed to the wrong people is considerable. Vital, sensitive information falling into the wrong hands can bring irreversible damage to a business. Document management software solutions let you safeguard confidential business information through rigorous security policies and role-based access control (RBAC) where authorized users alone are allowed to view certain files or documents.

In the case of disasters like fire or flooding, cloud-based DMS ensures your business-critical data are kept intact, not wiped out from the face of the earth.

3. Anytime, anywhere access

As is the case with cloud-based software solutions, web-based DMS affords users the ability to access files and documents anywhere, anytime, regardless of device used, which is particularly handy when collaborating on projects with team members who are on the go or located remotely.”

To read more of the list, join our friends over at business2community for the in-depth article. 

E-discovery may be common in today’s legal world, but that certainly wasn’t always the case. This month’s history of cybersecurity looks back to how discovery technology was developed, and what it has to do with the Iran-Contra affair.

“With the aggressive pace of technological change and the onslaught of news regarding data breaches, cyber-attacks, and technological threats to privacy and security, it is easy to assume these are fundamentally new threats. The pace of technological change is slower than it feels, and many seemingly new categories of threats have been with us longer than we remember. Nervous System is a monthly series that approaches issues of data privacy and cybersecurity from the context of history—to look to the past for clues about how to interpret the present and prepare for the future.

In November 1986, an internal leak to the press exposed a secret United States operation to funnel the proceeds of weapons sold to the Islamic Republic of Iran (in violation of an arms embargo) to fund the revolutionary Contras in Nicaragua (in contravention of Congress). As the press started to cover the scandal, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North went to his computer at the National Security Council and started deleting emails pertaining to his role in the scheme. Over the course of a frantic weekend, he manually deleted around 750 emails.:

Click here to read the entire breakdown written by Davis Kalat for law.com.

Lawyers, ask yourselves:

Can I ethically connect my work laptop computer to an unsecured public Wi-Fi network?

What data security measures are in place at the technology vendors that store and process my clients’ confidential information?

Do the software applications that process my clients’ confidential information have the latest security updates?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, there’s a strong likelihood that you’re violating the ethical obligation to “make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, or unauthorized access to, information relating to the representation of a client.” [ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.6(c)] That’s because the duty to make reasonable efforts to prevent the disclosure of client confidential information necessarily includes (1) the duty to understand the confidentiality implications of each technology used in firm operations and (2) the duty to make inquiries of all technology vendors to ensure that their cybersecurity practices are sufficiently robust to protect client confidential information. Lawyers who fail to carefully vet technology vendors are already failing their clients from a professional ethics standpoint.

Click here to read more!