Indeed, in Foundation Trilogy even the ordinary circular file was a reliable disposal device. Anything dropped into a wastepaper basket was disintegrated, right down to the atomic level — the ultimate shredder.

Asimov never said what happened if someone chucked a document into the basket, then tried to grab it.

Reality Check

In real life, our wastepaper baskets are safer. But they are not as reliable for disposing of documents that have reached the end of their life cycle. For small and midsize businesses (SMBs), this can be a real and serious concern. Sooner or later, nearly every paper document reaches the end of its life cycle.

At that point it can and should be disposed of. Many papers can simply be thrown away, but many others should not be. Their life cycle has expired, but they still contain sensitive information — and both criminals and business competitors have been known to dumpster-dive in search of valuable or potentially damaging information.

Secure Disposal

Shredders sold in office-supply stores are not sufficient. They are a pain to use and often, SMBs don’t always
shred what they need to as a result. Moreover, they preserve no record of what has been disposed of — leaving doubts that can surface in costly legal discovery actions.

Large organizations can provide their own secure document disposal. SMBs, however, can use a professional helping hand. Truly secure shredding of expired documents involves multiple steps and specialized resources. Documents slated for disposal must be recorded, with a chain of custody to show that they were, in fact, destroyed. They must be securely transported to a disposal site, and securely destroyed.

The good news is that these services are available, at an affordable price. And once expired documents have been securely and reliably disposed of, everyone can breathe easier.

As I have posted in the past, data is the lifeblood of modern businesses. Companies must carefully protect their information.  Three critical best practices of data protection include:

1. Maintain consistent and reliable data protection operations
2. Implement a comprehensive offsite plan for backup data
3. Develop a cohesive disaster recovery (DR) plan

These three operations will significantly reduce the likelihood of a significant data loss event.  The other day I read the article, “Macomb County Suffers without Backup Data Center,” published by the local CBS news affiliate in Detroit, MI. It immediately brought to mind these three best practices.  Unfortunately, it appears that Macomb County, suffered a total loss situation.  Let’s look at each best practice and see how Macomb County could have used them to avoid this situation.

• Backup and Recovery Strategy: You must have an effective strategy in place to enable recovery in the case of data loss.  This will protect from a local outage such as a server or storage failure and enable your operation to recover rapidly.  However, a reliable strategy is only part of the solution because it does not address the issue of total site loss.  The story does not clearly state whether Macomb leveraged this best practice.
• Offsite Policy: An offsite strategy is a critical component of backup recovery.  If your backup data is in the same location as your production information then a major event will take out both your primary and backup data with the end result that you lose everything.  This must be avoided at all costs since data is critical and the loss of all information would likely be catastrophic for your business.  Addressing this situation is easier than it seems.  Iron Mountain offers a range of cost effective offsite options that allows customers to send critical information whether on tapes, hard drives or even over the cloud to our secure vaults or data centers.  In the case of Macomb, it appears that a more effective offsite strategy could have helped avoid this outage.
• DR Strategy: The first two best practices talk about ensuring that your data can be restored; however, that is only part of the problem.  Assuming you have the data, you need a plan which describes how you recover your operations after the disaster occurs.  The plan will include information such as how to recover your information, what hardware will be required (and ideally pre-staged) to access the information and where all of this will take place.  Ideally, end users should not only have a plan, but should test it periodically.  This is can be one of the most challenging best practices for companies in today’s cost conscious environments, and it appears that Macomb may have struggled here as well.

In summary, Macomb County provides an example of a difficult situation.  The article is a bit vague about what exactly happened but it appears that recovering business operations will be difficult for Macomb.    Adopting best practices would have prevented much of this data loss and enabled rapid recovery of operations.  As a reader of this blog, I encourage you to think about how you adhere to these three best practices and how you would recover from an outage like this.  The unfortunate reality is that a catastrophic outage could happen to anyone and consistent backup/recovery operations, offsite policies and DR strategies are critical in helping mitigate the business impact.

Three agencies – and acronyms now have the primary  power to issue new rules and regulations to enforce the Act, including rolling out new reporting and recordkeeping requirements starting with the process involving “swaps”:  the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the newly created Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB).

The new regulations for swaps require changes to records and information management (RIM) policy and process.  These requirements include retention rules as well as instructions for access to records that vary from records being ‘readily accessible’ for the first 2 years, to long term storage requirements that include a 3-day retrieval mandate for those archived records.  Keep in mind that these obligations need to be consistently adhered to regardless of whether the swap records are electronic, physical – or a hybrid of both.

If your head is spinning due to the scale and scope of these requirements, you’re not alone.  There are retention schedules to update, stakeholders to educate, applications and systems to modify,  and storage and retrieval processes that will require Records Management and IT collaboration.

But you don’t have to tackle this challenge alone; you can start by thoroughly reviewing the impact of Dodd-Frank on RIM, and by engaging leading consultants who have helped other organizations navigate this journey.  With the potential implications of not meeting the new requirements, working with records management experts who live RIM 24/7 will help you mitigate financial risk and optimize your response times.  Without a trusted advisor  constantly monitoring the evolution of the regulations on your behalf, you’ll find that Dodd-Frank really is a Big Deal!

All of which makes document management crucial to the smooth operation of a business or other organization. For small and medium-size businesses (SMBs), however, effective management of their documents can pose a challenge. It involves a variety of specialized skills, experience and tools. Large enterprises can afford to maintain in-house operations to handle document management tasks. But these capabilities can be a costly investment, too much for many SMBs.

The good news is that there are alternatives.

The Document Life Cycle from Birth to Death

Managing documents effectively is not just a matter of pigeonholing them in a file cabinet or its electronic equivalent. The conversion of paper documents to electronic form is, itself, a sophisticated, demanding process.

Documents must indeed be organized and classified. Metadata — information about what information the documents contain — must also be collected, classified and preserved.

Moreover, documents have a distinct life cycle. This life cycle goes from their creation to classification, preservation and operational storage. Some stored documents are consulted regularly. Others are kept for occasional need or because their preservation is mandated by law or regulatory compliance.

Finally, the useful or mandated life cycle of most documents comes to an end. They must then be securely disposed of, and their disposal itself properly documented. Keeping life-expired documents is not merely a waste of effort and storage space. It can be harmful.

In the event of litigation, old, expired documents may be unearthed by the discovery process. Apart from the discovery-related costs, an innocuous old email, in the hands of adverse counsel, can be a ripe source for misunderstanding or unfair insinuation.

Professional Support

In short, small and medium-size businesses, like large enterprises, need professional solutions for managing their documents. But these capabilities do not need to be built in-house, adding costs and distracting staff from their primary business tasks.

Professional specialists in document management can off-load the complex infrastructure tasks involved, saving SMBs time, money and storage space. SMBs can then rest assured that their records and other documents are classified and safely stored with convenient access provided. Rest assured that expired documents have been securely shredded or otherwise disposed of, with chain of custody verified.

Managing records should not be a burden. And it does not need to be.

According to the report, “by putting in place EHR systems that meet rigorous functionality and ease-of-use standards, providers and patients will reap tangible benefits in quality and affordability.  These include easy access to health records and data, reminders and alerts for providers and patients, and reductions in medical errors.”

While much of the conversation on Meaningful Use is taking place in health and business publications, as a patient and end-user of this program, I find the results are also personal.  My own medical record is available through a secure online portal, and with a few mouse clicks, I’m able to see my lab results online – often within hours of my visit. I’m also able to track my progress over time, to better correlate my own habits to the results. And, with approximately half of the US population currently managing a chronic disease, it will be increasingly important to actively engage patients in their care.

Although progress is happening, there is still work to do. The recent Progress Report noted that 75% of eligible hospitals are participating in EHR incentive programs, but only 44% of physician and other healthcare providers have received payments. HHS is setting an aggressive goal for 50% of physician offices to be using EHRs by the end of 2013.

As these physicians begin their transition process to the electronic health record, they have the opportunity to re-think their existing workflows and operations. Valuable practice space that may currently be used to store patient records can be repurposed for additional treatment rooms. Labor-intensive workflows – including records scanning – that currently require resource-constrained staff can be outsourced so they can focus on more strategic initiatives.

And, for those physicians that haven’t yet made the transition, there is good news ahead. In addition to participating in Meaningful Use incentive benefits, there are other expected benefits as well. Ambulatory practices that have successfully transitioned are reporting clinical and cost saving benefits, including reduction in time consuming tasks, more accurate reimbursement coding, reduced medical errors and improved quality of care.

Most importantly, patients can become more knowledgeable in managing their own care. With easy electronic access to their own health information, patients can be active participants in improving their own health – and driving meaningful progress on the path to Meaningful Use.

“Disrupt” is about entrepreneurs looking to create a product or service which offers something fresh to the market place by thinking in a truly different way.

One example in the book is the socks industry, which has seen little innovation for years yet people just accepted the status quo. To look at the industry in a new way, the business/design team answered the question, “What do we know and think about socks?” Responses included: socks match, they come in pairs, they look alike, some people buy all the same color, one in the pairs always gets lost, etc. By questioning this traditional thinking and asking “why”, the company “Little Missmatched” was born, based on socks that don’t match.  They sell a very successful line of accessories for tweens including socks which are sold in 3’s.  They’re different but complementary colors and designs -any of which can be worn together.

 When You “Think Different” You Make a Difference

When looking at many of our customers’ Accounts Payable departments, the current and largely manual invoice processes are the result of layering of systems, technologies and process exceptions. I can’t help believe that many companies would like to “think different.” Change does not come easily. Many believe in the expression “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”  More than likely, the process has been broken for years, but folks just “work around” it. If Little Missmatch can shake things up by appealing to tweens who don’t want to waste time matching socks… maybe Accounts Payable departments ought to look at their invoices  processes in a new way too.  By adopting an automated workflow solution, users don’t have to spend time matching invoices to PO’s because the system does this for them.

Change Can be Easier Than you Think

Today’s Cloud based offerings provide an opportunity to more fully automate your AP workflow with little upfront cost or capital investment. These solutions are designed with the  user in mind. Leveraging a Software-as-a-Service model puts  you in charge and no longer dependent upon IT to make a difference in  the process.

What if you never had to match socks again? And then, imagine if you could eliminate having to touch every invoice so you have more time to address the (mismatched) exceptions requiring your attention? With Iron Mountain, you’ll have an end to end records scanning, AP workflow and invoice process automation solution from a single provider. We call it Iron Mountain Electronic Invoice Solution.  A modular approach allows you the freedom to adopt all or just portions of the solution, allowing your department to start small and scale as needs evolve. This can directly improve the overall performance of your  department as well as speeding up processing time and improving visibility – the type of change that makes a real difference.

Last Tuesday, Iron Mountain announced our new Iron Mountain Data Centers portfolio (check out some photos).  This offering extends Iron Mountain’s solutions to include a range of data center facilities including wholesale and retail colocation.  The relationship of trust, security and reliability that you expect from us has now been extended to the data center.  Like Superman, these solutions are designed to rescue you in times of duress such as when your data center is under assault whether from evil geniuses like Lex Luther or more mundane enemies like fires or floods.  You could even avoid many of these risks by hosting your primary infrastructure at our secure facility.  However, the parallel between Superman and Iron Mountain’s new data center goes beyond simple emergency rescues and here are four elements that both entities have in common.

Trusted – Superman is a true ally and you know that he can be trusted to protect the best interest of humankind.  When he arrives, you feel safe.  Similarly, Iron Mountain is a trusted partner in storing critical customer data; we are there when disasters occur.  Our new data center offering extends the security and protection to your colocation infrastructure, and like Superman, our team of data center experts are thoroughly trained and can be trusted to provide immediate assistance around the clock in times of distress.

Strong – Superman is ridiculously strong as evidenced by the fact that he can leap tall buildings in a single bound.  While Iron Mountain’s jumping is not quite up to those standards, our premier underground data center in Western PA is located 200 feet underground in a limestone mine.  You cannot get much stronger than an underground mine!

Cool – Anyone who walks around in a skin tight blue suit with a red cape is either really cool or really insane, and we know that Superman is not the latter.  For Iron Mountain, our premier underground data center is cool on multiple levels.  Not only does it deliver a PUE less than 1.3 (translation: highly efficient), but did I mention that it is in a mine?  To add further coolness, the mine also includes a lake and its own fire department complete with a full size fire truck!

Handsome – I am not really qualified to judge Superman’s attractiveness; however, my wife assures me that Superman is definitely handsome.  Now beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder, but to me the natural rock walls of Iron Mountain’s underground data center qualify as ruggedly handsome.

I want to end this blog with where I started.  Simply put, Superman is the “The Man” and we need more like him.  However, barring an unforeseen explosion on the planet Krypton, he may not be showing up any time soon.  Fortunately, the new Iron Mountain Data Centers portfolio offers a compelling alternative which can hold us over as we wait for the man in the blue tights to appear.

Ask any manager about their records, and those who know the truth will say their physical files are in pretty good shape, tucked away in a clean, secure location: “A place for everything and everything in its place.” She may even smile with the peace of mind such certainty brings. Now think about digital records storage and management systems.

The digital side is a mess. The kind of mess that tempts you to stuff it all in a closet and slam the door quick before it all falls out. The problem is that someone always comes along and opens that door; something heavy always falls out. There are more effective long term solutions. The objective here is to create a framework conducive to change; an e-records system should have everything you need to move forward when new platforms arise.

If you’re looking for a physical solution to a digital problem, you could end up with a bigger mess full of holes. Litigators and compliance regulators don’t accept cracks as a suitable storage facility – things fall through them all the time. Would you want to be the person tasked with finding a contract addendum that just happens to live in the last marketing director’s instant messaging chat history?

Every document that’s important to your business can and should flow into a digital records management system. Start by benchmarking your current state, and then get all the different platforms that various departments use talking. These types of records all belong in an e-storage system:

• Contracts
• Presentations
• Proposals
• Email confirmations
• Online chats
• Social media, including Facebook and Twitter

It’s not enough to qualify what records are today and what they may look like tomorrow. Digital records management must have agility built in so that businesses can continue to adapt new technology. As you entrust off-site storage for your physical files, know that a comprehensive e-storage system is the solution to today’s digital mess. Once such a system is in place, businesses enjoy the peace of mind that comes with knowing that every important piece of information, whether it was created last year on paper of yesterday on a screen, is in its place.

This conference provides a robust agenda featuring breakout tracks designed for leadership teams responsible for growth opportunities in the cloud.  The session we are most looking forward to is titled, “Risk Management & Security = Success”, which will feature our very own Frank Bruno as a guest speaker.

As cloud computing adoption continues to gain momentum, the threats posed to organizations are becoming increasingly complex. In the Risk Management & Security = Success session, panelists will engage in a lively discussion focusing on the critical role that information risk and security practices play in the modern business environment. Take this opportunity to learn the latest best practices in risk mitigation as the panel examines emerging trends in the cloud ecosystem — and discover key considerations in safeguarding your future success!

Want to join us at AATC?  Save $300 with our special discount code AACSP when you register online. (Note: this discount is valid off the individual SIIA non-member only and does not apply to current attendees.)

Make sure to visit us at the Iron Mountain booth, where we can show you how SaaSProtect Continuity Services and SaaSProtect High Availability offer powerful solutions to the risks and challenges associated with adopting cloud applications.  We encourage you to explore this video and datasheet to learn more!