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Document security is a crucial part of any business. You want to assure your customers, vendors, and employees that any information they give to you is secure and safe. So what is the safest way to keep your documents secure?

With increased data breaches at major companies throughout the years, it is easier to assume that paper documents are more secure than digital ones. However, that is not the case. By keeping your paper documents, your company can run into many document security issues including theft, damage, human error, and more. 

Going paperless is the best way to protect your documents and keep your employees’ and customers’ information safe. It also opens up the possibility of easier access and collaboration of your documents. What exactly does “going paperless” mean, though, and why is it so crucial for the security of your documents?

Going Paperless

In summary, “going paperless” is the act of transforming all your physical documents into digital documents that can then be stored, secured, and managed. Many businesses have begun the journey to becoming paperless. However, there are still a number of businesses that keep paper-based processes.

As we said earlier, keeping paper-based documents can be risky and pricey. One of the main issues with keeping paper documents is security, especially with companies with specific security protocols. You don’t want to sabotage your client’s sensitive information by not having the proper document security in place. Throughout this blog, we will dive deeper into the top 3 security issues every company has faced and how they can be solved by going paperless.

Audits

Let’s be honest: No one looks forward to audits. They can be extremely stressful and, if not done correctly, can impact your business and interrupt productivity. It becomes even more stressful when all your documents are scattered around in filing cabinets, off-site facilities, desk doors, etc. Employees would have to scramble around to locate the proper documents needed for the audit, which could take days. 

By going paperless, you’ll save a tremendous amount of time finding the documents required for your audit. Not to mention that once your documents are fully digitized, you can use tools like a document management system (DMS) to house and organize your documents and keep an audit trail for all of your documents. That will allow you to capture any revisions made on a digital document with a full audit trail. You will be able to see if and when someone accessed your documents and if they have made any major changes. Having this ability makes auditing much more efficient and easier for a lot of companies.

Managed Access

Many documents do not need to be accessed by everyone within your company. There may even be some documents that you legally can’t share with everyone. If you are keeping paper documents, how would you manage that access? Maybe through locked filing cabinets or off-site storage, but those security measures only go so far. The last thing your business needs is clients’ information getting into the wrong hands. 

With digital documents, you have much more robust security options for your documents. For example, you can use systems like a DMS to grant specific access to certain documents to people within your company. You can also have it password protected and have different levels of access for certain employees. This prevents the wrong people from either seeing or editing documents that they shouldn’t.

Physical Security

It’s obvious that paper documents have a much higher risk of being destroyed and going missing than digital documents. Floods, earthquakes, fires, hurricanes, all these natural disasters, and more can easily wipe away all of your records if they are paper-based. How would you retrieve them? Do you have copies? How long would it take to recreate the documents you lost? Imagine the time and money it would cost your company to rebuild all those documents. Usually, we hear companies with the mindset of “it won’t happen to me” when it comes to these issues. Surprisingly, it happens more than you think and you don’t want to wait until it happens to your company, or it might be too late. 

Proper disposal of physical documents is also crucial to security. If you keep paper-based documents, you would have to shred every document at the end of its use. That can be time-consuming and lead to human error as well. In addition, if a paper document is not properly disposed of, your business could run into a variety of legal issues. 

All of these issues can be resolved by going paperless. With digital documents, you won’t ever have to worry about natural disasters wiping away all your information since it will be housed digitally within a system. You will also be able to ensure that your documents are properly disposed of and deleted without needing a shredder or running into issues with human error.

Next Steps

These top three security issues aren’t the only issues that can be solved by going paperless. There are so many other benefits that will help your business stay secure and for a better user experience overall.

Ready to start the paperless journey? With Optix, we will help you begin your process of becoming paperless with a document management system. Our document scanning, document management, workflow automation, and more will help your business grow without the hassle of storing paper documents. Still have questions? Give us a call or contact us. 

Click here to download his blog as a PDF.