Outsourcing Your Records

Outsourcing your records management program can sound like a scary prospect. A records manager naturally fears loss of control and loss of security. If chosen carefully, an offsite provider can actually increase control and security, while saving you time and money.

One particularly time and resource intensive process is converting paper documents to digital. According to NewsLive365.com

Taking on a document conversion project is way more than just scanning documents, and it is easily one of those projects that really do need to be outsourced at the onset and then handed over to the staff to maintain. The trick is:
1. Finding a reliable resource to select the right infrastructure to fit your document storage needs long term.
2. Knowing your new document management system will be easy to use and all key employees are trained thoroughly.
3. Having ALL of your existing documents scanned in verified in to the document management system so they can be found easily.
4. Have a clear system in place for maintaining the incoming documents in order to keep your company organized.

In related news, copiers, not just paper copies, are security risks. Copiers, like computers, have hard drives. Like a computer, the hard drive needs to be scrubbed before sale or disposal.

For demonstration purposes, CBS purchased four used, discarded machines:
The results were stunning: from the sex crimes unit there were detailed domestic violence complaints and a list of wanted sex offenders. On a second machine from the Buffalo Police Narcotics Unit we found a list of targets in a major drug raid.

The third machine, from a New York construction company, spit out design plans for a building near Ground Zero in Manhattan; 95 pages of pay stubs with names, addresses and social security numbers; and $40,000 in copied checks.

But it wasn’t until hitting “print” on the fourth machine – from Affinity Health Plan, a New York insurance company, that we obtained the most disturbing documents: 300 pages of individual medical records.

Photocopy machine hard drives are supposed to be encrypted or wiped before resale, but obviously such is not being done. And, as CBS notes -

The day we visited the New Jersey warehouse, two shipping containers packed with used copiers were headed overseas – loaded with secrets on their way to unknown buyers in Argentina and Singapore.