According to PwC’s 2023 Cloud Business Survey, 78 percent of executive-level respondents report that most or all parts of their businesses are utilizing cloud technology.
Despite the rising rates of cloud adoption, many businesses are also supporting on-site legacy processes, including physical document management.
Whether your organization is managing documents in the cloud, on premises, or both, maintaining compliance with industry and government regulations must be a top priority.Depending on your business’s industry and location, how you manage, store, transmit, and dispose of documents may be governed by regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and CCPA. Failure to follow regulatory guidelines can result in non-compliance fines and penalties—and put your customer and company data at risk.
11 best practices for maintaining document compliance
Achieving and maintaining compliance may seem overwhelming at first, but adopting these proven document management best practices can help you establish a solid strategy.
1. Conduct regular audits and reviews
Regularly reviewing and updating your organization’s document management policies and processes will help keep them aligned with changes in regulations and internal policies.
Internal and external audits evaluate the effectiveness of your internal controls and compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and standards—and identify areas that need improvement.
2. Utilize a document management system
The right document management system (DMS) can help you simplify document compliance by automating many of the functions that support your compliance efforts.
Look for DMS software that includes features such as version control, access controls, and audit trails that integrate with your other business systems to create visibility and traceability across the organization.
3. Implement access control tools
Access control is a non-negotiable component of a document compliance strategy because it allows you to manage who can access, view, modify, and distribute sensitive information.
Common access control tools that help restrict access to authorized personnel only include:
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Encryption
- Role-based access control (RBAC)
- Least-privilege policies
- Audit trails
- Employee awareness training
4. Enforce policies and procedures
Develop, document, and—most importantly—enforce clear policies and procedures for document creation, handling, storage, and disposal. Making sure these policies are easily accessible and understood by all employees will make compliance an organization-wide initiative.
5. Prioritize employee training and awareness
Set employees up for success by conducting regular training sessions on compliance requirements and best practices. This will raise awareness about why document management matters and foster a culture of compliance.
6. Establish document retention and disposal schedules
National and international document retention guidelines require businesses to store certain documents for a defined period which varies by document type and jurisdiction. When establishing your schedule, refer to your relevant policies to ensure legal compliance.
Establishing a document retention schedule will enable your organization to properly dispose of documents as they reach the end of their retention period, maintaining compliance and freeing up space in your physical and cloud-based storage.
7. Accurately tag metadata
Although most regulations don’t specifically mandate metadata tagging, they do require accurate and organized record-keeping, data retrieval, and security—all of which are facilitated by effective metadata management.
For example:
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires compliance with data subject access requests; metadata tagging makes it possible to quickly retrieve all relevant documents when someone requests access to their personal data.
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates patient records be protected and remain confidential; metadata tagging helps classify documents appropriately and make them accessible only to authorized personnel.
- Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) requires businesses to comply with e-discovery requests; metadata tagging ensures that electronic documents can be easily located and produced if requested for legal proceedings.
8. Monitor business systems for unauthorized access attempts
Whether unintentional or malicious, unauthorized access to sensitive documents violates the terms of many document management standards and regulations.
Real-time monitoring and alerting solutions allow your security team to detect and respond to suspicious document access and modification.
9. Stay current on compliance laws and regulations
Document compliance laws and regulations are subject to change, which can leave your organization inadvertently out of compliance. Staying up to date on any updates, amendments, and new regulations that impact your business reduces your risk of non-compliance in the event of an audit, legal proceeding, or security breach.
10. Create a disaster recovery and backup plan
Cyberattacks and natural disasters impact businesses of every size in every industry, which makes a comprehensive disaster recovery plan a must-have to maintain document compliance.
A well-designed and tested disaster recovery and cloud backup strategy helps businesses quickly resume operations and restore access to essential documents after an outage or security event.
11. Understand international standards and regulations
Businesses that operate in multiple countries must adhere to country- and region-specific document compliance regulations, such as GDPR in the EU, HIPAA in the U.S., and various international standards such as ISO 19475:202.1.
As mentioned previously, standards and regulations are far from static. Monitoring changes and regularly updating document management policies and processes is key to maintaining global compliance.
Take the guesswork out of document compliance
Regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and CCPA set stringent standards for data protection, privacy, and record-keeping practices.
Implementing a document management strategy that incorporates the best practices outlined above allows your organization to create, transmit, retain, and dispose of sensitive documents in compliance with regulatory requirements as well as internal policies and industry standards.
Ready to ensure the security and compliance of your digital transactions? Watch our on-demand webinar, Securing Digital Transactions in an Insecure World—featuring experts from Microsoft, DLA Piper, and Nitro—to gain valuable advice on protecting your digital transactions, the latest eSigning trends, and balancing security and compliance with business needs.