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Does Your Organization Spend More Money On Coffee Supplies Than Security?
Only 43% of businesses that suffer from an incapacitating disaster ever resume operations. Unfortunately, most companies spend more money on coffee supplies than information or records security.
Though interest rose after Sept. 11, many companies have once again put information on the back burner. In addition, even after such a disastrous fourth quarter in 2001, Gartner research found that many companies still do not have comprehensive programs and sufficient network practices.
Since 90% of a company’s information knowledge is in paper document format, failing to take appropriate measures for these documents could make you more vulnerable to the following situations:
- Misfiling and lost data- Every year, American businesses generate one trillion pages of paper documents and 2.7 billion pieces of paper that go into file cabinets every day. Statistics show 3% to 5% of these files are lost or misfiled.
- Theft and breaches- Economic, political, and competitive motivations that fuel long-term interest in attacking computer systems, especially in public networks.
- Natural disasters or terrorist actions- Unplanned disasters increase the risk of revenue, data assets and customer losses.
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Increase Records Security
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Proactive measures need to be taken to identify potential vulnerable spots and invest in suitable solutions. Breaches cost companies an average of $185 per document, often accumulating to $2,000,000 per instance. Can your company afford to ignore document security any longer? If so, you had better grab another cup of coffee.
Learn How Dumpster Diving Causes Excessive Fines
Dumpster diving is the criminal practice of obtaining personal information from discarded materials. In 2003, there were over 10 million cases of reported identity theft. Effective June 1, all businesses are required to shred, burn or pulverize any documents containing credit information or consumer reports. These actions are mandated by the document-destruction provision of The Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act of 2003 (FACTA).
The FACTA document-destruction rule broadly covers "any record about an individual - that is a consumer report or is derived from a consumer report." Congress interprets this to mean any document containing a Social Number or other financial and personal data such as check stubs, marketing lists and health information. An infraction of FACTA can come from an inspection by federal authorities, but is more likely to surface when a case of identity theft is traced back to the company that did not dispose of documents correctly. Each infraction of FACTA carries a $2,500 penalty per infraction and also makes a company liable for damages to any victims of identity theft the company contributed to due to improper disposal of information. Increased fears of identity theft have fueled legislations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Financial Modernization Act, but "FACTA is much broader," said Michael Brinkman chairman of Ice Miller law firm's employment section. "It's safe to say that FACTA will affect any and all businesses."
Traditionally, dumpster diving has been combated by document destruction. This simple concept of document destruction generates a perplexing debate, either destroy the documents internally or outsource the process. The internal destruction of document demands man hours, resources and perfect manual audit and resources. Most organizations only have resources to shred documents on a quarterly basis or at best on a monthly basis. To shred efficiently you would have to have a dedicated resource, but you don't want a low- level employee with access to sensitive documents and you don't want your executives standing at a shredder all day.
A second alternative is to outsource the document destruction. Unfortunately, this antiquated form of document management is laden with hidden costs. The National Association for Information Destruction (NAID), an Arizona-based paper shredding industry trade group said that the destruction and transportation of shredded material is expensive and is growing exponentially. These costs are passed directly to the customer as the document destruction company benefits from profits coming from the destruction services as well as the sale of shredded paper to recycling brokers.
The unspoken need in either of these situations is that there needs to be a reproducible history for the lifecycle of each document from the time that it was created to the time that it was destroyed, and a record of everyone who touched it in between. Without this, organizations have no defense against litigation for damages stemming from identity theft. If an outside contractor is used, due diligence is required to ensure that the documents information was not leaked when being handled by the outside contractors, and that it was destroyed completely.
An alternative to the debate over internal or outsourced document destruction can be accomplished through Cornerstone Communications' document strategies. By implementing Unifier, one of Cornerstone's proven document strategies, labor is never burdened, and resources are never expended. Unifier has the ability to replace paper forms that capture credit and consumer information with secure web-based forms.
Web-based forms allow employees to originate business processes without having to leave their desktop. Unifier also leverages the power of an electronic workflow engine. Once the web form is generated it can be electronically routed to an unlimited number of recipients that have the correct and next responsibility within the business process. The next recipient is then automatically prompted to approve, disapprove, annotate, or start an additional process. These workflow steps are accompanied by an automated audit trail. Every time a document is "touched", an electronic fingerprint is recorded of who accessed the record, where they accessed the record from and what they did with the record. Contact us today to see how we can help turn your paper into profits, while avoiding FACTA fines.
Proven Document Management and Cost Reduction Strategies
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