Author: Crown Information Managment

In the age of paperless offices, you may think you need to convert all your physical records to electronic data that eventually rests on a variety of offline and online networks. Whether it is on the advice of your technology vendors, or due to newer mandates introduced in federal, state or industry-specific legislations, you may transfer vast amounts of personal, financial and business information onto the cloud. However, it’s important to realize that your cloud storage or on-premise servers are not invincible. The number of instances of data breaches that make daily headlines are proof of the fact that online storage has more than its fair share of security risks. In fact, any kind of digital presence makes you and your business vulnerable to a number of technical glitches, hacks, and cybercrimes. This includes privacy violations, identity theft, loss of sensitive information, or crippling of business operations due to malware and ransomware attacks. 

Records management may seem like a mundane task that just helps organize your physical or digital files and folders for future retrieval. However, have you considered the repercussions of not doing this right? Whether it is a compliance issue or a security breach, sometimes a single piece of paper may have the potential to prevent a public relations crisis, or a complete corporate debacle. Essentially, not producing the right document at the right time could impact your business in a number of ways, including, expensive lawsuits, hefty regulatory fines, huge negative publicity, loss of trust amongst stakeholders, customer attrition, decreased profitability, and more.

However, records management is not just about stacking papers in files or boxes and storing them in a safe deposit vault. Over time, you may build such a massive repository, that it may be impossible to identify and retrieve records, in the absence of proper classification, sorting, and coding of documents. Moreover, you may also need to be mindful of the applicable state, federal and industry-specific regulations that mandate permanent retention, or secure destruction of certain types of records. 

At Crown Information Management, we believe professional record management is a secret weapon that every business should consider adding to their arsenal. Read on to know why you may want to prioritize this activity and address a number of potential organizational risks.

Advantages of Professional Record Management Services 

For any business, managing and preserving records has a direct impact on corporate governance, risk management, and compliance. Hence, a well-executed records management program acts as a safeguard against unexpected future events. In fact, outsourcing this activity to the professionals is even better. It will not only save your business a significant amount of time, money, resources, and precious real estate, but also help you focus on your core operations, and leave this crucial activity in the hands of the experts. 

Here are a couple of the other benefits that your business will enjoy by tying up with a SOC1, NAID AAA and PCI Certified records management company, such as Crown Information Management.

• Easy Retrieval Equals Smooth Crisis Management: Whether it is audit queries, lawsuit proceedings, internal reviews, or something else, no matter what prompts the need to dig out old records, time is of the essence in all such situations. Our information management specialists help you do exactly that. We use a systematic approach towards document sorting, classification, indexing, storage, and tracking, which makes it easy to retrieve any file or record you need within short turnaround times. We are also open to adopting your internal coding methods, or help you develop a reliable and efficient document management policy.
• Compliance is Paramount:  Many industry-specific regulations, such as HIPAA, FACTA, or FERPA, have strict guidelines regarding eternal preservation, or time-based destruction of certain records. In fact, certain legislation, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act allows regulators to levy large monetary fines on businesses that alter, falsify, destroy, or cover up entries in records. Even if an employee mishandles the records, ‘vicarious liability’ holds employers accountable for the wrongful, negligent, or intentional actions of their employees. Hence, record management is not just an industry best practice, but also vital in preventing the premature destruction or accidental loss of your company’s data and information. At Crown, we not only provide a secure facility and systematic storage of your physical records, but also consult and educate business leaders and managers on various aspects of record management. This includes classification of vital and important records, and designing of record retention plans. We also help you create programs to sensitize your employees about information security risks and related protocols or best practices.

From safe storage and timely access to your business records, to discreet and secure document destruction services, at Crown Information Management, we address every stage of the record lifecycle. Count on our qualified information management professionals and skilled data destruction technicians to protect your business from potential risks.

To learn more about our record management, storage, and destruction services, call Crown Information Management at 800-979-9545. You can also contact us online to request a free quote.

Keeping confidential records in a self-storage unit is a disaster waiting to happen. There are too many uncontrollable factors that affect business productivity and jeopardize client privacy. Fortunately, you have a choice. Records Management is the professional practice of managing the records of an organization throughout their life cycle, from the time they are created to their eventual disposal. This includes identifying, classifying, storing, securing, retrieving, tracking and destroying or permanently preserving records.

There are a number of occasions when your business may be sitting on a large pile of inventory. From actual products, raw materials and branded packaging, to marketing props, uniforms, and stationery items, your warehouses or corporate storage spaces may be crammed with a variety of items. If these items are redundant, it is critical that you send them to a professional product destruction facility for secure disposal. 

Whether it sits in digital documents, paper records, or hard drives, your business information is always potentially vulnerable to hacks, breaches and theft. While you can enhance the security of your digital information by investing in sophisticated IT security applications and technology, your physical files and folders do not enjoy the same privileges. This New Year, why not implement formal processes and policies around document management and destruction? Give your businesses the opportunity to:

When it comes to protecting customer’s personal information, Florida means business. The Florida Information Protection Act (FIPA) which came into effect in mid-2014 applies to every business and government entity that stores the information of Florida residents. Essentially, this act: 

• Expands the definition of ‘personal information’ that every entity is legally bound to safeguard
• Establishes stricter breach notification protocols than most other states in the US.

It is that time of the year when most of us start gearing up for the upcoming holiday season. Planning parties and get-togethers with family and friends? Looking forward to escaping the cold and vacationing at a tropical retreat? No matter what your holidays look like, there will surely be plenty of shopping involved. Did you know that the holiday shopping season sees a huge spurt in cyber crimes and physical thefts? According to a NASDAQ report, during this time, incidents of identity theft peak and fraud rates soar 200% over the average rate. 

Whether you are a small business, a large corporation, or an independent professional, when it comes to business documents, you may be dealing with heaps of papers that need filing, storing, and safekeeping. While renting out a public storage facility may be one of the ways to free up valuable real estate, is it really an effective or safe way to store your confidential, sensitive or important business records? 

It is quite natural for many of us to turn a blind eye to the problems that have not impacted us, yet. You may not hesitate to narrate a story about a neighbor, a friend, or a relative who fell prey to a credit card scam, a robbery, a ransomware attack, or a social media account hack. But, how often do you pay heed to the real issues, or think about how you can prevent them from happening to you? As hard hitting as it sounds, you could be the next victim of any of these scams. Identity theft is a real problem, and in 2018, it affected 14.4 million Americans, and most of these incidents resulted from credit card fraud or Social Security Numbers (SSNs) falling in the wrong hands.