In the first quarter of 2022, the number of data breaches increased 14 percent on an annual basis, an Identity Theft Resource Center report suggests. As per the report, there have been 404 breaches over the first three months of the year. Most of those resulted from cyber attacks.
The ramifications of such breaches involving financial documents can be massive. That’s precisely what cases like the Pandora Paper leak demonstrate.
So, is there anything that cloud document management could incorporate in order to offer better protection to financial documents? The short answer is yes. The longer explanation will be outlined in the coming sections.
Evaluate the Quality of Cloud Document Management Solutions
The security of a cloud document management is as good as the reputation of the service provider. Don’t just pick cloud storage randomly, do your research. This is especially important for archives that contain sensitive personal and financial details.
Cloud-based document storage and management platforms aren’t created equal. Some have advanced security features. Some also enable personalization in a way that meets the distinctive needs of the organization.
Document security is always dependent on the implementation of multiple safeguards that reduce the risk of both hack attacks and human errors. Try to identify your biggest vulnerabilities and make sure the solution you’re choosing for your archive is capable of addressing those in an optimal way.
Encryption and Cloud Document Management
When it comes to the security of financial documents, encryption is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. Luckily, innovative cloud document management solutions feature it as a standard capability.
Encryption allows to add personalized passwords to the most sensitive documents within your archive.
An encrypted document is much more difficult to crack and access that a standard one. It’s a good practice to have all of your financial files encrypted. That, in combination with access control, reduces the risk of hack attacks and leaks significantly.
Regular Backup Capabilities
Hack attacks and data leaks aren’t the only threats that your financial documents may be exposed to.
There’s also some risk of data loss that can be detrimental for an enterprise.
Data loss can occur for a variety of reasons. Accidental deletions are common. Files that get misplaced or categorized in a faulty way could also become very difficult to retrieve. Finally, accidents, natural disasters and technical malfunctions can also occur. Most enterprises have gone through at least one such situation over the course of their existence.
A good cloud-based document management system has extensive backup capabilities.
In most instances, backups will occur automatically at a time interval scheduled by the system moderator. When such archiving takes place on a regular basis, disaster recovery is guaranteed 100 percent.
Reduce the Risk of Human Error
Even the best cloud document management systems don’t offer foolproof security for financial documents and other kinds of sensitive information.
The way your employees work with the system is as important as the safeguards in place. Hence, you should make sure that everyone is aware of advanced capabilities, as well as the best practices pertaining to financial document security.
This may sound like a no-brainer but strong passwords that are changed regularly will be vitally important. Weak passwords create one of the biggest vulnerabilities, even when the best cloud document storages are being utilized.
It’s also important to have collaboration rules in place. Limiting the number of people who have access to the archive (or to the most sensitive parts of it) can make security threats smaller and easier to manage.
Most cloud solutions evolve and offer upgrades as new technologies become available. Hence, staff training should be ongoing to make sure everyone knows what’s the latest that the system has to offer in the realm of security.
Make the Cloud Your Default Storage for Financial Documents
Many enterprises are still somewhat concerned about turning the cloud into their primary document storage medium.
If you have such worries, we can assure you that cloud storage is one of the safest options for financial documentation. In fact, it’s a good idea to turn cloud storage into your default choice.
Saving documents directly to the cloud eliminates local copies. More copies create additional risks. You’ll have to think about the security of the local network on top of the selection of the right cloud service provider. Maintaining two or more systems will obviously be costly and challenging.
When employing the right cloud-based document management platform, you can be 100 percent confident in its security. The creation of local copies may seem like a good idea especially when disaster recovery is concerned but this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Financial documents are employed by all companies. These are some of the most vulnerable files and an extra layer of protection will be needed to protect the information. Cloud-based document management offers effortless customization and advanced functionalities. By sticking to a few best practices, you can easily make the most of the platform that you’ve decided to employ.