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Q: Can you tell me how document scanning improves corporate security.
A: There are several aspects to that.
Firstly, the security you’re going to derive from actually scanning the physical documents and getting them into an electronic environment. Once you’ve scanned the record and it’s an electronic file, you can back that up either to DVD or the Cloud or your network server environment.
Another aspect regarding security considerations is Electronic Document Management Systems provide significant Security Controls for the information they contain:
Each user will have an Audit Log Record of all interactions with the system such as files accessed, printed, emailed, deleted or version modifications to records.
The System Administrator can allocate access control to specified record types by departmental criteria or subsets of documents by classification i.e. HR Records, Payroll, Board Papers etc would have limited access to only nominated users.
Q: Do your clients want you to destroy the paper or want them back after scanning?
A: On the whole, I’d suggest that more than 90 percent of the documents that we scan are securely destroyed. In reality, most are a transactional records rather than State Archives.
Being able to physically destroy the file under the auspices of the Evidence Act, is a significant benefit.
Under the Evidence Act of 1995, the images are fully evidentiary. They hold the same weight in law. And it gives you the option of actually destroying the physical files because they have equality from an evidentiary position.
Certain record types are retained by clients. It depends on the sensitivity of those records. They may have cultural / historical value or be of such an age that they’re deemed to be a true historical archive. So, in those instances, we’re capturing the image giving public access to the information and the actual historic files are no longer being manhandled, from a preservation stance, the original item is maintained to best effect.
So today more than ever before it is simply a decision that’s needed to implement a total solution that provides single point access to all information with the embedded level of security and accountability appropriate to each organisation.
