Telecommuting Can Be Risky Business
Microfilm Vs. Digital
Information Management: Is It Time?
Large Format Scanning
A word of warning to all offices that have shredders throughout their facilities for employees to shred confidential documents. They do not work on their own! That is right, each shredder we looked at in a recent audit we did for a prospective customer required a user to turn them on and feed them paper. We found that despite the company efforts toward security, many documents and confidential papers were being thrown in the trash without being shredded. The reasons? It takes too much time, inadequate training, lack of concern, or just plain forgetting. If you use your own personnel and equipment to shred documents, take a walk through your building at the end of a business day. Digging through the trash may expose a false sense of security office shredders can create.
Telecommuting Can Be Risky Business
As gas prices are soaring and some businesses and municipalities are considering shorter work weeks or allowing some workers to work at home, there may be underlying risks that far outweigh any benefits. Working from home with remote access may allow security standards to be bypassed. Easy to download products such as GOTOMYPC may not be secure. Making sure the IT department is involved and good secure connections are made is critical. There may be other dangers as well. Employees taking documents home or leaving them in cars where they can be stolen is also a security risk to companies, employees and customers. Recent reports of highly classified documents left on a train in the United Kingdom come to mind. Before proceeding down this path, make sure you have gone through all the potential weak points in the movement of documents, whether paper or electronic, back and forth between home and the office.
has been used in the information management world for many years. It offers a way to reduce storage volume and makes records available by loading the film into reader/printers for viewing and/or printing of a record. It is typically less expensive to create than digital images and offers a unique advantage in that it is a "human readable" format. Digital images also offer many advantages including the ability to manage documents more in real-time and eliminate the need for filing. To make a proper evaluation, one must examine the reasons for microfilming in the first place. We have located some resources to assist organizations in this evaluation. Here are some comprehensive articles on the topic.Information Management, Is It Time?
Ten Business reasons for a records management system this year
- To control the creation and growth of records.
- Reduce operating costs. (increased profits)
- Improve efficiency and productivity.
- Assimilate new records management technologies.
- Ensure regulatory compliance.
- Minimize litigation risks.
- Safeguard vital information.
- Support better management decision making.
- Preserve the corporate memory.
- Foster professionalism in running the business.
The above ten reasons are expanded upon here by the Department of the Interior's Records Management Program.
Also ARMA (The Association of Records Managers and Administrators) has an informative paper to help get you started, or contact our office for assistance.
We at Lakeshore Document Services have always strived to be on the cutting edge of information management technology and our latest offering continues that effort. We have recently invested in a large format Graphtec Scanner to provide scanning for architectural and engineering drawings. From simple black and white to true blueprints, we can now assist organizations to create and share easy to use digital copies of large drawings. This will enable companies to save valuable original records while giving ready access to these documents. Contact us or simply bring in samples to let us show you the convenience and productivity improvements you can realize by having these documents scanned to the format of your choice.