The Best Ways To Secure Paper Documents

All organizations accumulate piles of important documents and necessary files throughout their years of conducting business. Eventually, the collection of paper documents grows to an unmanageable degree until it’s hard to find proper storage for it—and even harder to secure. By utilizing the best ways to secure paper documents for your business or organization, you can prevent security breaches with ease.

Secure the Storage Area

Your first step should be to assess the storage room’s security. Take a look at your filing cabinets. Do they all have functional locks? Do you know where the key or keys are at all times? As long as you keep the cabinets locked whenever you’re not using them, especially overnight, you’re taking measures to secure your files.

Add extra security measures to your storage rooms by installing surveillance cameras and requiring employees to sign in and out when accessing files. If anything goes missing, you’ll know where to look first. Let your staff know who has access to the storage room, when they can access it, and that they cannot bring documents home with them.

Stay Organized and Maintain a Storage System

Keeping your documents organized makes it easier to access the files and track when a record is missing. Manage your files in a way that makes sense for your organization—you may organize by date, file type, or name. Give files a legal “expiration date” that simplifies the disposal process. With the ability to cycle out files, you’ll continue to make room in your storage room for new documents.

Start Scanning Your Documents

If your documents don’t have digital backups, now is the time to change that. One of the best ways to secure paper documents is to digitize them in case of damage or loss. Scan backups of your valuable documentation so that you can make space in your storage room by either disposing of the physical files or storing them off-site. Once the documents are safe in your network, you can focus on protecting your company’s computers and emphasizing cybersecurity—which you may already be doing anyway.

Leave the documents to an expert digitizing company, and reap all the benefits of professional document digitization services, such as OCR-enabled files for easy indexing. DiJiFi is HIPAA compliant and protects your sensitive information as you would in your office; you also have the option of securely disposing of the documentation once it’s scanned and safely contained in your cloud storage.