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For many reasons, we lose important information, often due to issues we don’t consider in our electronic document management processes. I’ll share some points that, in my opinion, we should consider:
1. Build a work process and support it through an electronic document management policy. Most information losses can generally be prevented; these sometimes start due to a failure in the data management process or the lack thereof.
Once I was talking with a very successful manager of a company, he told me: “Documents don’t belong to the end user. The information is from and for the company, therefore the end user must follow the guidelines we create or face the consequences of not following them”.
It sounds somewhat dictatorial; however, this gentleman managed to create a culture of responsibility regarding the handling of his organization’s documents, successfully conveying their value to his collaborators.
Basically, the creation, presentation, and correct understanding of the process by collaborators, combined with a clear document management policy in the organization, establish the foundation for document-level security.
2. Use an antivirus When we are contacted to recover documents, a common factor apart from the lack of information backups is the lack of an antivirus on the end user’s equipment, this includes Apple devices (MacOS system), yes ladies and gentlemen, these devices are not “immune” to viruses circulating on the Internet. As for which antivirus to use, there are many good products on the market, one of my favorites is Kaspersky as it provides protection on its EndPoint platform at a centralized level, allowing the creation of enterprise-level protection policies and also; it provides us with alternatives such as Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365 which allows us to connect with Microsoft Office 365, so that protection starts with documents before they reach the user and even in their Cloud system.
3. Use an application to synchronize your collaborators’ files in the cloud
We have plenty of alternatives, OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, among others. Personally, I use OneDrive for my business documents, both those I handle on a day-to-day basis and those shared with collaborators. The important thing here is to always save the information in the folder assigned to this application, this way the system will synchronize the data and we will be sure to have a real-time backup.
4. Centralize your company’s information in a secure location
Centralizing documentation in a secure place to share documents is key for the correct application of document management processes, policy compliance, and audits.
By centralizing the information and creating folders by departments, we ensure that collaborators will work more smoothly with their team members and at the same time, we begin to create a document management culture in the organization.
The users themselves will request to save the data in the shared site so they can work or follow up on requests, presentations, proposals, financial statements, among other documents.
5. Assign access permissions to documents
This is a bit more technical, but it will be easy for your technology provider to understand. All you need to provide is a directory of documents you want in your business and indicate which users or departments can access them.
As easy as the following example:
Who has access? Finance team or “Juanito X”
Define the type of permission. Read, Write, View or Full Control
What directory structure do you want?
– Finance
– Reports
– Financial Statements
For these types of structures, I use Microsoft SharePoint as it integrates very easily with Windows and even with MacOS.
A small tip: Don’t use long names for files; some people want to describe the entire content of the file in its title. Be brief when naming a document. Trust me, I’ve seen users have difficulties retrieving such documents from their backup systems due to long names.
6. Set up audits
Request your provider to configure rules and audits to control document handling.
Example:
The finance team can send emails outside the organization, but I want it to be recorded every time they send a financial report to an email outside our organization.
7. Use passwords (almost obvious) and two-factor authentication
Regarding passwords, you wouldn’t believe how many people set their passwords using information about their pets, family members, or birthdays, or as easy as guessing that it’s the password they use for everything.
I recommend two-factor authentication, most systems ask you to set this up, and often we “click” on the option to “remind me later” or “skip”.
It’s important that we take time to set up this alternative that will help us avoid many information losses, thefts, scams, or other problems. This will help us know when someone unauthorized is trying to use our applications or access our information.
I hope these 7 tips are very useful to you. If you want to know more about this, you can request more information through this WhatsApp
