5 Steps to Electronic Document Security

User protecting their documents with 5 steps to electronic document security

The volume and complexity of information that businesses create and use are often a challenge to manage. Organizations processing thousands of electronic documents in a variety of formats are at risk of having their data lost or stolen. Regardless of paper or digital formats, all data deserves security and protection.

How to Protect Digital Documents

To overcome the challenges of paper and digital document security, you need to understand how documents are used, stored, and managed within your organization. Company networks often contain documents with sensitive information. Financial records, employee and client information, are too frequently exposed if the right privacy and security measures are not in place.

Implementing an information governance program with scanning and secure document disposal reduces the risk of information breaches. Plus, you get all the benefits of digitization and can ensure the right people have access to the right information at the right time.

Here’s how our document management services provide electronic document security in 5 simple steps.

#1: Capture

The first step in protecting and properly managing documents is to capture contents with document imaging. Our scanning services convert paper documents into PDF files. Each PDF is capable of OCR search capabilities for easy identification.

OCR search captures PDF documents and indexes them to extract sensitive and personally identifiable information such as names or social security numbers. With document redaction, sensitive fields are scrubbed from files entirely, ensuring documents remain completely confidential.

#2: Store

Once documents are converted into digital form, you’ll need somewhere to safely store them. Digitized documents that don’t require physical storage can be uploaded to Cloud storage. OCR technology builds a complete database in the Cloud for a unified view and simple retrieval of documents.

Users with document access can make edits that are synced, tracked, and backed up daily.

#3: Manage

Managing the permissions, user roles, and version controls of Cloud storage is a key step in achieving electronic document security. With cloud storage, organizations can collaborate better and have peace of mind knowing the only people with access can see sensitive documents.

Since scanned versions of files can be accessed from anywhere, the Cloud uses specific document access controls to restrict access to different user levels. Privacy controls allow you to decide which documents are kept private and off-limit to employees.

Businesses must understand how users access information and data processes to successfully develop a management system. These systems create audit trails to store and record every activity applied to a document. With the audit trail, organizations can see who created, viewed, or edited documents, proving activity in the event of a data breach.

#4: Preserve

With constantly evolving regulatory, legal, risk, and operational requirements managing documents requires more maintenance than ever. Combining document scanning with cloud storage fosters collaboration, but also helps manage strict compliances and security.

Some documents have specific retention policies and schedules that require documents to be kept by law for a set number of years. Many organizations implement a document management program to ensure documents are maintained for their set period and then removed.

A Document Management System (DMS) can automatically enforce lifecycle requirements under document retention policies. These organized repositories are designed to keep records compliant with state, federal, and industry regulations.

#5: Transform

Integrating security measures for documents in one area of your organization leads to comprehensive digital transformation. Once documents are successfully set up to provide consistent, accurate, and secure data, the benefits of document management can be applied to other lines of your business.

For example, accounting or human resources departments can be encouraged to implement the program into their own data processes, leading to organization-wide document security.

Scanning for Enhanced Document Security

Document security is an essential aspect of every business. At Didlake Imaging we help to ensure your document management program is set up to comply with the latest security regulations. We build systems and processes for each business’ unique lifecycles by putting your documents to work for you.

Knowing where to start in creating your secure document management program, can be overwhelming. But we’re here to help. Our team of imaging experts develop secure scanning and indexing processes that are customized for your business. Enhance your document security with Didlake Imaging. Request a free sample scan to get started.