News

Out of Control!

How secure is secure when it comes to corporate information?

Bob Larrivee

Security has become a raging issue these days, not unlike the days Grandpa talked about when the military coined the phrase, “loose lips sink ships” as the mantra to keep information secure at all levels including your conversations. This is still true today with the advent of cellular technology allowing us to converse anywhere at anytime to anyone and thinking our conversation will go unheard by those around us. Aside from the obvious, this same technology allows us to share textual information in the form of IM (instant messaging) and email creation and response. Think about the amount of information that is transmitted and transferred daily for business purposes. Staggering!

In Today's World

The whole idea of loose lips sinking ships can now be applied to cell conversations, email communications, IM and even portable storage devices like thumb drives that allow us to take information with us every where we go. Imagine what would happen if you had some of your corporate intellectual property in your possession. Let's say it is in electronic form stored on a thumb drive that is disguised as a pen. (I know it is sounds Secret Agent like, but I happen to own one.) Now let's imagine that the “pen” falls from your pocket or briefcase, at the airport, without you knowing it. An unsuspecting person, walking by a short time later, happens upon this nice looking pen and picks it up, not knowing the hidden secret that lies within.

As time passes, the innocent bystander, now owner of the pen, happens to twist it only to find that is contains a thumb drive. Wow, this is an amazing device! Without delay it is placed into the USB port where the entire content is now available for viewing, all the while, you are wondering what happened to the device and worried of who might have it now. Fortunately for you, this person has no idea what the information means, deletes it and uses the device for other purposes.

Prepare for the Unexpected

This is but one example of things that can and will go wrong in today's world. This same scenario could have used a cell phone or even as we have seen all too often in the news lately, someone's laptop PC. It is easy to see why one might think their information management practices are out of control .

The key is to prepare and expect the unexpected. Know that these devices exist, people will use them and information will be transferred in many ways. The idea is for you to implement and communicate a strong record and content management policy that details proper corporate procedure in relation to corporate information. The incorporation of (ERM) Electronic Records Management and ECM (Enterprise Content Management) systems that fully support your records and retention policies will provide a stronger position for you to enforce information management practices. If loose lips could sink ships, uncontrolled information could easily sink corporations.

Next Steps

You now have a better understanding of the risk and what you should do to tighten security around your information. The question is where do you begin to learn about the best practices and gain the knowledge that will allow you to act?

You have already begun your journey and now it is time to expand upon what you have learned in this article by considering the benefits gained from attending and completing one of the AIIM Education offerings in ERM or ECM. Each of these programs presents the strategies, concepts and processes associated with a holistic approach rather than compartmentalized summations. In the Masters programs, you will take all that you have learned and apply it to a case study scenario that ties it all together in a practical way. Can you afford to wait?

Reprint from AIIM eDoc Magazine written by Bob Larrivee, Director of AIIM Global Education Services – Americas

INFOIMAGEM-2008 – Facts and Figures

INFOIMAGEM 2008 took place on September 9 - 11, at Frei Caneca Convention Center . This event, organized yearly by CENADEM – Centro Nacional da Gestão da Informação (National Center for Information Management Development, São Paulo, Brazil), focuses on ECM – Enterprise Content Management and EDM – Electronic Document Management. It comprises a Conference divided into a number of technical sessions ministered by renowned speakers , and a Trade Fair, which gather together the industry's major solutions, products and services vendors.

AIIM International, an ECM leader organization from the USA , sponsored and took active part in INFOIMAGEM 2008, which allowed CENADEM to bring Bob Larrivee to Brazil to minister the AIIM intensive course on Enterprise Content Management Practitioner Training and the The State Of The Art ERM – Electronic Records Management Seminar. Bob Larrivee is the Director of Global Education Services USA for AIIM International.

About 1.2 thousand participants attended the Conference; 287 of these participants attended Bob Larrivee's course. Thanks to an agreement between CENADEM and AIIM, the course's attendees were given the right to access the modules required to take the AIIM's certification test on the course subject.

The technical sessions covered themes such as BPM – Business Process Management, BPO – Business Processing Outsourcing, Image and Data Capture, Scanning, Digital Certification, Information Classification, Taxonomy, Metadata, ECM – Enterprise Content Management, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, EDM – Electronic Documents Management, Technology Trends and WCM – Web Content Management.

Trade Fair exhibitors: ATP, 2D Tecnologia , ABBYY, Canon, CTIS, Datasul, Documentar , DOCS Brasil, DS – Doc Solution, DPI3, Estec, FastScan, GED&AP, Ima, KT Sistemas , Kaisen, Kodak, Kofax, Linker, Microservice, Micrométodos, MI Montreal, NGE, Novatec, Orion, Oracle, PDF Brasil, Prodimage, Scansystem, Spur, ReadSoft, W4 Global .

A number of software and hardware solutions were showcased to a qualified public. By and large exhibitors' and conference attendees' expectations were met.

The “The Best of The Year” Award ceremony was held on the second day of the event. This award, presented in many different categories, is given to professionals and to companies that have either contributed to disseminate the ECM and EDM technologies or obtained significant benefits from their use.

The event was attended by 2438 participants, including conference attendees and visitors

CENADEM awards ECM and EDM technologies users, professionals and vendors

For the 16 th consecutive year, CENADEM held the “ The Best Of The Year” Award Ceremony in an entertaining evening at Buffet Torres on September 10, the second day of the INFOIMAGEM-2008.

Professionals and users of ECM and EDM technologies were given the award, in ten different categories, by Antonio Paulo de Andrade e Silva, director of CENADEM. “The awards are given to professionals and to companies that have successfully used ECM and EDM technologies in their business, not only to increase their productivity, profitability and competitive advantage, but also to reach their goals in terms of economy and cultural changes regarding the documents and information treatment, thus improving corporate life”, he said.

The winners are the following:

Application of the Year – Document Management : Casas Bahia, a retail chain which has chosen a scanning solution, automatic indexing, with maximum processing speed, which prevents bottlenecks and eliminates the manual information gathering and physical archiving of sales invoices, including an automatic data recognition process, automatic information validation, digital storage of documents images, and availability for query via web. The solution was provided by ReadSoft.

Application of the Year – Document Imaging : Gerdau , the largest long steel producer of the American continent, for CPF project ( Central de Processamento Fiscal ). The project's goals are to centralize the tax documents regarding goods entry, services and bills of lading; to increase the productivity of tax documents entry and validation into the ERP system; to optimize the use of resources, reducing labor costs and allowing continuous process enhancement. The solution was provided by MI Montreal Informática , with the Kofax Ascent Software .

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Of The Year : Comgás , a natural gas utilities company, for have been using a complete Enterprise Content Management (ECM) System for two years. The system provides the users with all features required to manage the technical documents relating to the pipeline projects of the natural gas grid . The integration with other applications increases the system complexity. New works are registered directly on the ERP system and the documents are entered and stored into the ECM. After the work is completed, a documentation integration of ECM and a GIS system is done. The solution was provided by Kaizen.

Workflow Of The Year : Lojas Marisa , a chain of retail clothing stores, for the first project in Brazil to use the automatic documents classification technology. In order to streamline the analysis process of the credit documents and to provide investors with more transparency, Lojas Marisa has chosen a distributed capture solution of the documents concerning the opening of a credit line for their products, regarding EDM and Workflow. The software is the Ascent Capture Enterprise and Xtrata Pro.

EDM On The Internet : Acesso Digital , for an innovative solution regarding the way it is sold. When the companies purchase the Safe-Doc, they receive a high speed scanner , a document capture and classification tool (both digitized and electronics), access to a portal for making online documentation search, and the electronic storage of these information in a datacenter which meets international security standards .

Initiative Of The Year : CTIS, for formatting a new business model for its printing outsourcing unit, aiming at adding an EDM module to substitute distributed gathering units for a central printing unit. A pilot project conducted in a financial institution allowed the automation and scanning of credit opening routines in ten cities were the company operates, by using multifunctional equipment. The same principle was used on the legal department of a major retail bank. Expecting to improve TCO and ROI of printing outsourcing projects, CTIS believes that it can contribute to create a new business model which leverage virtual processes based on ECM and EDM to replace the physical processes.

Professional Of The Year : Luiz Flávio Esteves . For the last three years, he has been working intensely as a consultant in the following areas: scanning bureaus creation, analysis and redesign of documents flows, EDM/ECM, Content Management, Workflow, collaboration and ECM projects implementation.

Pioneer Of The Year : Bob Larrivee , an internationally acknowledged teacher with more than 25 years of experience in applying advanced technologies and in processes enhancement. He is the Director of Global Education Services USA for AIIM International, the Enterprise Content Management - ECM Association, leading a team highly skilled in identifying, developing and distributing specialized training on best practices, technologies and methodologies.

Special Award : Ministério do Desenvolvimento , Indústria e Comércio Exterior , for developing a system that facilitates the Boards of Trade users to view the archived proceedings images in order to replace the manual search of physical documents. More than 20 million scanned documents are already available for the Boards of Trade users.

Scanning Bureau Of The Year : ATP , a nationwide company which started distributed scanning projects using Imagon family products, developed by ATP itself, and the Kofax products.

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