Keeping Data Safe in a Paperless Office

Implementing document management software is a forward-thinking, exciting choice in today’s office environment, and it’s important to ensure that all best practices are followed to guarantee the safety and organization of content. Especially when your company deals with financial documents and uses invoice automation processes, cybersecurity is something to be aware of while remaining mindful of preserving your budget and the environment throughout.

Using effective passwords

For many, a password is a difficult to remember addendum to making use of cloud services and something that tends to slow electronic workflow, but creating secure passwords is a critical practice that everyone using document management software should be aware of. InformationWeek writer Matthew J. Swartz interviewed Roger Thompson, chief emerging threats researcher at ICSA Labs about password security and how the everyday employee can keep their information secure without getting confused.

“When it comes to creating passwords, remember to use separate and unique passwords for each site. Password reuse is your enemy,” Swartz wrote. “That’s because when criminals obtain passwords, they often trade them with other people via underground bulletin boards, after which they’ll test whether user credentials – username, password – for one site will work on another.”

Passwords should ideally be devoid of any personal information that would be easy for a hacker to figure out, as well as free of any names or common phrases that would be easy to crack. A jumbled mix of vowels and consonants, as well as any amount of punctuation or symbols, is the best practice – a user can assign meaning to a randomized password by making up an acronym or other device to make remembering the sequence easier.

Train employees on best practices

Jordan Robertson, a writer for the BusinessWeek blog, recently reported that oftentimes, improperly trained employees are the main reason why information breaches occur at companies. When invoice automation becomes a critical part of document management workflow, all employees should be aware of basic cybersecurity practices to best protect their data, as well as that of their clients.

To prevent safety from every being an issue in your office, ensure that a project manager leading the charge on a paperless transition teaches all employees not only how to make use of paperless document management, but how to do so conscientiously. Once this important task is complete, going paperless is actually far more secure than your ordinary, poorly organized filing cabinets. Industry blog Document Management Software Review explained the difference in a recent overview of the benefits of working in a paper-free environment.

“Even a locked file cabinet is vulnerable to being broken into by someone with prying eyes,” writer Brian Larson asserted. “Your paper documents are not safe from those who really want to see them. In a paperless office, you can add several levels of security to keep unauthorized persons from seeing sensitive material.”

The advantages of invoice automation and document imaging workflow ring true, as long as a business works with their provider to stay safe and secure.