Gilmore Blog https://www.gilmoreservices.com/blog/author/steve-clopton

Every company should be concerned with information security. The average data breach costs $3.9 million and can do irreparable damage to your company’s reputation. The same is true with compliance missteps, which can cost thousands of dollars in fines and lost trust.

Hurricane season is in full swing and with it, a heightened sense of urgency about preparing your business for a big storm and the hassles that come with it. 

What should you do with business hard drives you’re no longer using? That’s an important question to ask – and answering it incorrectly can lead to significant risks down the line.

Do you have important paper documents and electronic storage for your company? If you do, then it’s essential to have a disaster recovery system in place to ensure that your documents are protected during a disaster and accessible after the fact.

As more businesses turn to paperless documents and storage, it’s essential to have a plan for managing e-waste. You need to protect your valuable data, but you also need to figure out how to properly dispose of electronics that you’re no longer using.

Do you have a data destruction schedule for your business? Even if you’re not bound by regulations such as HIPAA and FACTA, you still have a responsibility to your clients to protect their information and destroy it properly.

Document storage is not something you can afford to take lightly. Before you partner with a document storage provider to store and safeguard your most important business records, it’s important to ask a few key questions to ensure that the provider you choose has the expertise to protect them.

Filing taxes is an annual requirement and one that can occupy a lot of time for both individuals and businesses. Once your taxes are filed, you might want to relax and forget about them. But, you’ll need to consider what to do with the documents related to your taxes.

Record retention is important for every business. Depending on the industry, enterprises are required to retain a variety of documents in adherence with regulations and destroy them on a schedule. Individuals also need to think about record retention and dispose of personal information properly.

Every organization that stores health and medical records on behalf of patients must adhere to HIPAA regulations. The regulations specify which records must be stored, which security measures must be taken, and when records must be destroyed.

Destroying a hard drive isn’t as easy as you might think. Even data on a drive that’s been severely damaged can sometimes still be retrieved. That’s a scary thought if your organization needs to destroy data in accordance with HIPAA or FACTA regulations.

Every company has a responsibility to keep accurate accounts. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 dictates specific record-keeping and accounting requirements. Failure to comply with them can lead to legal penalties as well as damage to your reputation.

Are you taking care to properly destroy the hard drives where you store sensitive business information? A surprising number of businesses are not, and it cost them. The average business data breach in the United States costs $7.9 million dollars in lost revenue and eroded trust.

Shredding documents is a critical component of compliance with regulations like HIPAA and FACTA. When documents are not properly destroyed, there’s a risk that they might be stolen or reconstructed, thus compromising the privacy and security of your clients.

Storing business documents is a concern for every company. Without proper storage, you run the risk of misplacing documents or losing them to water damage and other environmental hazards. And, if your company stores financial or health records, improper storage can lead to regulatory infractions.

Dealing with your company’s valuable data requires care and attention. It’s your responsibility to safeguard your clients’ privacy and adhere to any regulations that apply to the storage and destruction of the data you collect.

Properly indexing, storing, and destroying documents according to regulations can be a time-consuming task. Many companies struggle to keep up, and yet, the cost of improperly storing and destroying documents can be astronomical.

Document imaging provides businesses with an affordable and effective way to safeguard their essential documents. It can also be an important part of a small business disaster recovery plan.

Every small business owner knows that keeping track of essential documents is a must. In the event of a disaster, your ability to access those documents can help you stay in business even if you can’t get to your office.

Records and Information Management, or RIM as we call it, is an essential part of keeping your valuable business records and data secure. It’s not uncommon for companies to make mistakes when managing their records due to carelessness or inexperience.

Regardless of your industry, data breaches are a serious threat. Your data (and data you store on behalf of your clients) is vulnerable to attack. It’s your job to do whatever you can to protect it.

Storing sensitive documents yourself might seem like a cost-effective and smart thing to do. You won’t need to pay a professional storage service and you’ll always be sure that you know where your documents are.  However, document self-storage is not as safe as you might think.

All businesses create documents to record customer and client interactions and maintain employee records. While it’s important to store those documents for some time, both government regulations and personal preferences may make it necessary to destroy them.

Why partner with a shredding company when you can just buy a shredder yourself? I mean, document destruction is as easy as grabbing some files, putting them through the shredder and calling it day, right? Well, not exactly.

Document storage might not be the most exciting part of your job as an office manager, but that doesn’t mean it’s not vital to your company’s operations. Privacy, security, and compliance are all at stake when you decide where and how to store company documents.

Believe it or not, the third quarter is around the corner. As a business owner or manager, now’s the time to finalize your business plan for the quarter so you can work toward meeting your financial goals in the second half of the year. That could mean ramping up your marketing efforts, making any necessary cuts, or increasing process efficiency.

When it comes to office organization and processes, sometimes it’s smarter to trust the experts. Sure, you could handle your own document storage and compliance responsibilities, but it’s often inefficient and, ultimately, costly.

You’ve probably heard of this compliance regulation before, but do you really know what it means? Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance is a critical step in the accounting and auditing processes of public companies.

However, some of the Act’s provisions also apply to private companies. Even accidently destroying documents required under the act can lead to repercussions, so every business needs to take steps to ensure proper compliance.

Whether you operate a small, single-physician family practice or are an administrator in a large hospital, records management is one of your primary responsibilities. Efficient records management is critical, not only for day-to-day operations but—most critically—for patient confidentiality and compliance with federal mandates like HIPAA.

If you’ve decided to implement a more strategic records management plan this year, you’ve taken a big step toward increasing efficiency and security for your organization.

However, when many companies decide to enhance their records management, they may do so piecemeal, with different personnel managing different parts of the plan. This strategy often leads to inconsistencies and can negate many of the benefits a records management plan can provide.