Archives for the 'Secure Storage' Category
Document scanning: PRODS will show you the way
Technology that we use on a day to day basis both at work and home is in a constant state of change. At home, having the latest and greatest (or at least a recent version) is often more a case of keeping up with the Joneses than anything else. However, in the business world, sticking to methods which have been superseded simply because they are “how we have always done it” offers your competitors the chance to gain a real advantage and can be tantamount to commercial suicide.
One such area is that of business documentation used within the company or as part of the interactions with suppliers and clients. In this area, paper documents have always been considered the safe option, but this is no longer enough. In today’s business environment, retaining information purely in paper format means that it can no longer benefit your company – indeed, it is undoubtedly now holding you back.
However, making sure that your information is available in electronic format is relatively easy to achieve, simply by ensuring that all relevant documents are consistently scanned and indexed. If you are unsure why this is important for your organisation, then just remember PRODS:
Protect
Scanning your documentation ensures that the information it contains is safe and secure. While paper can be inherently difficult to store securely while still making it accessible, digitally stored information allows you to maintain tight security as required while offering pre-determined levels of access to those needing it. Just as critically, by keeping backup copies off site, your data (and hence your business) remains safe and secure, giving you complete security and peace of mind in terms of disaster recovery.
Reference
Information is there to be used and referred to, so it’s important to make sure that wherever it is stored, it can referenced quickly and easily. By capturing the data once through a programme of document scanning, you then have the ability to refer to it and use it many times over in the different ways your business requires.
Organise
Information tends to be accumulated at an alarming rate in organisations of all sizes, so making sure that it is carefully organised and easy to locate when required is essential. Managing this process using filing cabinets and storage boxes is difficult at the best of times and finding information can be a nightmare, particularly if it is stored across multiple locations. With scanned documents, information can be indexed and organised for quick and easy location and access – in addition, you are not restricted to a single person using it at a time, instead many people can have access whenever required.
Distribute
Getting the right information and the right documents to the right people when they require it is difficult even when they are all located in the same office. Add numerous people across multiple offices who need to receive the information and the job becomes a logistics nightmare. With scanned documents, the task becomes as simple as attaching a document to an email and sending it to the relevant people – for non confidential information only of course. Alternatively, an online repository provides the secure access, while email or RSS delivers the means of letting the right people know where to find it.
Share
There is also the need to share information, whether this is related to an individual project or we are talking about a department or company wide programme. Having the ability to share the information between all relevant parties gives you a level of interactivity which means the information can be used even more effectively and the company can benefit from people sharing ideas and information quickly and efficiently.
The next time you are looking for a document or trying to access information that you don’t have available, give yourself a couple of PRODS and see if you could also benefit from having the information you need at your fingertips.
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Virtualisation - so what exactly is it?
When it comes to document scanning, virtualisation refers to the idea of storing documents in a virtual environment, creating a secure storage area akin to a vault or a safe where we can keep our information and documents safe … just like in a physical one, only this time virtually. Essentially, it comes down to creating a highly secured area which contains your company’s information and yet makes it instantly accessible to you all day every day, whatever your location.
To achieve this, our own solution for this uses eView+ which is exactly this type of Virtual Vault. It’s also an ideal solution for companies who want all the benefits that document scanning offers, but are unsure if they want to hold the information themselves or indeed whether they have sufficient space on their own servers to do so.
Effectively outsourcing this storage and secure access has proven to be the perfect solution for many organisations and is becoming increasingly popular - with an outsourced or managed service, you can be certain that everything is in place and done correctly for you. Although the size of company looking for this varies enormously, the solution works equally well if you only need a small number of documents stored or are looking to index hundreds of thousands of records. With well over half a billion documents already stored, size is most certainly not an issue.
Added to this, should the worse happen and records you hold at your own offices, in whatever format, are damaged or lost, then you are ideally covered from a disaster recovery perspective and can be back up and running almost immediately – saving you time, inconvenience and expense.
So next time you hear virtualisation, just think of a secure Virtual Vault, safely looking after your most important documents.
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Virtual Datarooms - not just for lawyers
Virtual datarooms are most commonly associated with very specific situations such as the due diligence process during a merger or acquisition. However, virtual datarooms are much more versatile than that and can be of enormous benefit to any company with large amounts of confidential information that need to be stored and shared securely.
A virtual dataroom is essentially a secure on-line document management system that allows you to store and index its information securely and then locate and retrieve it as required. Looked at in that way, it’s clear that this is what most companies require to house their key information and make widely accessible - particularly those which have employees at different locations and different offices that could be in different countries and timezones around the world.
There are also major benefits to be had by giving the growing band of home workers and mobile workers access to the information they need for their work, not forgetting the large number of shift workers that have traditionally had issues with data accessibility. Increased productivity is one obvious benefit, so too is avoiding confidential documents being transmitted by email and the creation of multiple revisions that can make it difficult to ensure that everyone has the same (and latest) information at their disposal.
So what types of organisations would benefit from this type of information storage within a company? To be honest, most companies suffer from having huge amounts of information scattered around the organisation that would benefit lots of different departments but that only a few people know exist. A fully indexed and accessible online document management system or virtual dataroom would soon open make this information available again.
There are also specific types of projects which would greatly benefit from this, primarily those which require cooperation and input from people who are in different locations but need to have access to a central source of information to work effectively. This might include projects such as ISO quality programmes, tender submissions for new business, product development or market research – all key projects that normally require huge amounts of resources and people to achieve the quality required and could greatly benefit from an online corporate dataroom.
The other benefits show just how attractive an option it can be at many different levels:
- instant access 24/7 from any location (given the relevant security codes of course) so that remote workers and different offices are all able to use the information;
- comprehensive indexing system allowing easy categorisation of documents and files as well as a full search facility;
- safe and secure access as well as multiple security levels giving total control over access to the information;
- full audit trail of documents and users’ access
All the benefits of virtual datarooms that have been enjoyed by some are entirely appropriate for all types of organisations. Just think of them as your corporate dataroom or secure online document storerooms and you’ll never have to go looking for a lost document again.
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Secure scanning for Dorset Police Authority
In recent years, Preview has worked with several UK Police Authorities, providing them with document scanning, archiving and indexing services. Much of the work has been focused on the sensitive area of child protection as a result of the IMPACT Programme which was set up in the wake of the Soham murders. This programme will ultimately deliver the Police National Database, a national intelligence sharing system. There have also been a number of other projects which fall under the Management of Police Information (MOPI) code of practice.
The latest project was for Dorset Police, who needed to scan and index several years worth of child protection files and required a document scanning services company with very specific qualities to ensure the absolute security of this information. Key to those requirements were that the personnel handling the files needed to have been security vetted within the previous 18 months.
Fortunately, because of their longstanding relationships with several Police Forces on projects relating to sensitive material, Preview has always maintained security vetted staff. They were therefore comfortably able to provide a team who had been fully vetted within the previous year, easily complying with the requirements. Since no additional verification was therefore required, they were able to progress the work quickly and smoothly.
There were still a number of additional requirements which placed certain functional constraints on the staff working on the project. Understandably, access to the files was restricted to normal working hours so many aspects of the work – namely the cataloguing, prepping, scanning and Quality Control stages - needed to be carried out on site during that time.
To ensure that the work was completed quickly and in line with the timeframes laid down for the project, a team of 6 people was used to carry out the work. With this team in place, Preview was able to deliver a fully scanned and indexed set of documents which contained some 600,000 images on schedule and on budget.
The scanning and indexing of existing paper based records has been key to the ongoing implementation of data-based policing initiatives. Preview offers a range of outsourced scanning, archiving & document management services perfectly matched to their requirements and, with Dorset Police, has once again demonstrated their ability to work closely with UK police forces to help them rapidly implement such initiatives.
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Who contributes most to your document mountain?
Sometimes, within organisations, there is a lack of appreciation of the amount of paperwork and documentation which is generated on a day to day basis from every department. Although there is still much talk about the “paperless office” and there are many organisations which have taken steps towards achieving it, there are still very few which have totally managed it.
Often there are departments which have managed to reduce the paperwork that they create by routinely scanning documents and using online copies to not only cut down on the storage they need but also speed up the often laborious job of finding that elusive file that you need to lay your hands on quickly. However, there are of course others which continue to amass filing cabinets around the office at an alarming rate.
So which departments are the biggest offenders in terms of paperwork creation or, perhaps more diplomatically, are the most paper-intensive? I guess that the answers won’t come as too much of a surprise but, according to a survey last year, they are:
- Accounts Department
- Human Resources
- Sales and Marketing Communications
- Operations
- Legal
- Customer Service
Luckily in all of these cases, a systematic approach to document scanning can really keep the volumes at reasonable levels and make sure that the filing cabinets don’t continue to multiply around the office.
If you have already implemented a document scanning process then no doubt you will have seen the benefits of having the information at your finger tips without piles of paper mounting up around you. But if you have colleagues who can hardly see across the office because their view is obstructed by fast multiplying filing cabinets, then why not send them a quick email to them and let them know your secret!
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Virtualisation at top of the agenda at the IT Directors’ Forum
Virtualisation – well, that’s a Web 2.0 word if ever I heard one. But what exactly does it mean? Well, in pure IT terms, you will often hear it used in connection with servers where it effectively allows you to run a number of operating systems and their applications on a single server.
However, when it comes to document scanning, virtualisation is used in a whole different context. Virtualisation refers to the idea of storing documents in a virtual environment, creating a secure storage area akin to a vault or a safe where we can keep our information and documents safe … just like in a physical one, only this time virtually. Essentially, a highly secured area which contains your company’s information and yet makes it instantly accessible to you all day every day, whatever your location.
To achieve this, our own solution for this uses eView+ which is exactly this type of Virtual Vault. It’s also an ideal solution for companies who want all the benefits that document scanning offers, but are unsure if they want to hold the information themselves or indeed whether they have sufficient space on their own servers to do so.
Effectively outsourcing this storage and secure access has proven to be the perfect solution for many organisations and judging by the reaction at the IT Directors’ Forum, it is becoming increasingly popular. Although the size of company looking for this varies enormously, the solution works equally well if you only need a small number of documents stored or are looking to index hundreds of thousands of records. With half a billion documents already stored, size is not an issue.
Added to this, should the worse happen and records you hold at your own offices, in whatever format, are damaged or lost, then you are ideally covered from a disaster recovery perspective and can be back up and running almost immediately – saving you time, inconvenience and expense.
So next time you hear virtualisation, don’t think servers … think of a secure Virtual Vault, safely looking after your most important documents.
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