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Companies and individuals were previously able to get away with a lot of wrongdoing, especially with regard to the privacy of electronic documents. Their excuse was that they did not know how to handle the security of such documents as it was still a relatively new field. That excuse is no longer viable due to the present regulations on privacy and personal data.
Now, it is the responsibility of each corporate entity to comply with the regulations. If they do not, their business proceedings may be cut short. Also, specific individuals in an entity may be held culpable and thus taken to court for non-compliance.
To ensure compliance, you can use a DRM security system as it gives you the best chance to comply with the law fully. Below, we discuss a few document compliance requirements and how a document DRM system can help you handle them.
Information Access Compliance
Some laws regulate who has access to what information and when they can access it. Doctor-patient confidentiality is one such example. The information disclosed in the treatment sessions of patients could just as easily be used against the patients in other life scenarios. Therefore, it makes sense for the law to protect this information from being disclosed.
As a doctor, if something goes wrong, you may need to prove who has access to a patient’s information in your office. You may also need to show who read certain documents and when and where they did so. This should help clear your name of any doubt and maybe even help you find the culprit.
A document DRM system helps you do all this as it encrypts documents, ensuring that only people with authorized keys can open the documents, controls access with licensing and how documents can be used with DRM controls. You also have the option to log and track document use to see who is using your documents, when they are opening it, and from which location.
Remember, the doctor-patient scenario is just one of many possible business scenarios that could benefit from a DRM system addition.
Business Processes Compliance
It is also your business’s responsibility to ensure that all your processes are as secure as they can be. You, therefore, need to prove that there are no loopholes that people can exploit to counter the protection measures used for your in-house documents. Being able to show that only authorized people can access certain documents will go a long way in helping prove that.
You can always decide to choose encryption, but then you would have no way of knowing what recipients do with your documents after receiving them – they can be decrypted and saved in unprotected form and there are no licensing controls to prevent further distribution. So, you cannot prove your business processes to be secure if you only use encryption.
Document Retention and Information Deletion
Usually, companies are allowed to keep individual records for a limited time. The standard timeframe is six to seven years, after which time the files must be deleted. However, it is difficult to track and delete all individual copies of a file, after such a long time. Also, most people will likely forget all about the requirement to delete the file.
A document DRM system can help you comply with such regulations since you can set an expiry date when you distribute the file. So, if you set it for the end of the seven years, then access will be revoked for all individuals at the set date. This means that no one will be able to access the information after the date which effectively means the information has been deleted. This also removes the hassle of having to remember the end date and even of worrying about documents which users took home on their devices.
Legal Access Compliance
At some time, your company will likely be subject to a legal process that requires access to your documents. But, just because these documents will be going out of your corporate environment does not mean that you are exempt from other privacy requirements. It also does not mean that these documents need to be out of your control.
A document DRM system will be useful in helping you comply with both these requirements as you can control who in the courts can gain access. It also enables you to control how many print copies the lawyers on either side of the divide can make. You can even add dynamic watermarking with DRM. With such watermarks, should there be a violation of the privacy laws, you can indicate which individuals were responsible, thereby removing the blame from yourself.
Conclusion
Finding your firm on the wrong side of the law is bad for business. So, if there is a way to avoid non-compliance with privacy regulations, then you should probably do it. That means you need to introduce a document DRM system into your organization. Start planning on how to get one as soon as possible.
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