Risk Management in the Age of Digital Documents

Managing information effectively is one of the keys to succeeding when business opportunities arise and surviving when times get tough.

Yet, today’s hyper-connected digital world has created a wide variety of new risks, while also making existing risks more serious. Consider how risk has changed in just a few short years:

• Using digital technology to store and transmit personal and financial data makes businesses and their customers constant targets for data breaches.
• Social media and the 24-hour news cycle means that every business decision you make and all actions taken by your employees are under constant scrutiny.
• Globalization and its interdependent economy have widened the scope of risk. It’s no longer just the city or the state your company is in. It’s the continent and the entire globe that has—and wants—access to your data.

Because documents make up the bulk of the information businesses manage, they should be among the areas of biggest focus. Not only do they hold the information lifeblood of your organization, the move to digitize them increases the risk from data breaches and natural disasters.

The key to mitigating these risks is multi-fold: a sound electronic document management systems (EDMS), a modern risk management approach and new technology that makes documents more secure against threats. Here are the key elements to consider.

Protect against information loss—guard business documents against man-made or natural disasters by implementing a document management system (DMS). A DMS helps you manage your digital files and paper documents more effectively and securely while providing multiple levels of backup.

Implement document security—the age of connectivity is making it easier than ever for information to be leaked. Mitigate your organization’s vulnerability by implementing technology that allows your team to remotely recall, erase or redact documents after they’re published or sent to recipients.

Ensure instant access to risk management resources—adopt a mobile crisis management platform that enables you and your team to send and receive alerts, incident reports, and real-time plan updates at every stage of a crisis.

Learn from incidents—after an incident occurs, bring stakeholders together to review what happened and why. Analyze what was done well and what could be improved. And most critically, implement any necessary changes.

A multi-prong solution that modernizes document management, enhances document security and mitigates overall risk can help revolutionize the way your organization uses, handles and protects its information.