If hackers hijack your company’s system, can you prove to your clients, as well as shareholders, that the integrity of your data (or theirs) had not been compromised? If your company is accused of bad accounting practices, can your company defend its information processes, as well as the system’s reliability?

Questions like this are crucial, since regulating governments all over the world are starting to make companies responsible for the trustworthiness and accuracy of their data or information. The risk of improper management and retention of files has grown exponentially with the newly passed laws like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the European Union Data Protection Directive and the GLBA or the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act – all of which incorporate additional fines and jail time for both public and private entities, as well as their management.

For more information about GLBA, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act for more details.

This regulatory and legal evolution, coupled with the use of digital systems to help manage modern corporate processes and activities, means that every electronic record in the system is now being defined in regulations and laws as being equal to micrographic and conventional paper records.

That is why it is imperative for both public and private entities to minimize the regulatory, business, and legal risks involved in the storage, capture, reproduction, and management of the electronic records. Industries that are at risk for regulatory review or litigation needs to be extra careful. Concerns include the accuracy and reliability of retained records, the ability to retrieve information and files when needed, as well as the method of retention.

Regulatory and legal requirements

In order for companies to comply with regulations and laws, they need to retain information in a way that makes it a lot easier to retrieve, at the same time being able to demonstrate that the information has not accessed or altered by anyone except authorized personnel. These types of requirements mean that the CIO or Chief Information Officer, as well as the legal counsel or lawyers, needs to work together to make sure compliance and competitiveness at the most reasonable cost.

The regulatory and legal acceptance of e-records is predicted to meetings specific well-accepted requirements. The overriding requirement is that these files are genuine and are considered as reliable, accurate, and trustworthy. These requirements imply that the e-records need to have near or have been captured at the time of the transaction or event.

It also needs to be available and completed for retrieval as requested for business or regulatory purposes. The structure and the content of these e-records also need to be preserved for the full retention of the record’s life. It includes any migration of files from one medium or system to another.

Failure to implement all these requirements will lead to unnecessary questions about certain files and processes by which the files were managed. The fewer weakness found in the management of documents storage systems and storage of files over their life cycle, the higher the likelihood these records will withstand legal challenges when it comes to its credibility and admissibility.

Reliability of electronic storage

The Uniform Photographic Copies of Public and Business Records as Evidence Law (both state and the federal government have their version of the law) states that reproductions made by processes that accurately form or reproduce a durable medium to reproduce the original are as acceptable in evidence as to the original.

While a lot of new data stored in the past are electronic, a lot of organizations are still converting data from hard copies, that is why most firms utilize mixed information storage modes. The law is vital since it bridges hard and electronic storage.

To find out more about electronic records, click here for more information.

It can also help define what is considered as original documents. That is why, with the arrival of electronic records, the interpretation of durable mediums has expanded to embrace automated storage technology. For the reproduction of electronic documents to be as admissible as the original, the technology used for storing files needs to be reliable, as well as support the reproduction of an accurate copy of the original file. That is why managers need to be aware of all the choices when it comes to hardware. It is imperative when deciding what device or storage architecture to use.