April 2013 Issue 81

Is your document security up to scratch?

B2B Editor1 April 2013

With a huge escalation in the amount of information received by organisations it’s now increasingly important to keep sensitive information securely protected. Technology is a great enabler, and as much as it provides more opportunity for businesses to achieve success, it is unbiased in who and how success is achieved: just look at WikiLeaks.

The challenge of protecting business critical information has never been greater. Failing to do so can effectively lead to financial penalty. In fact, the average organisational cost of a data breach in Australia is$2 million, which is cheap globally when you see that the same breach can cost $7.2 million in the United States and $4.7 million in Germany*.These ‘organisation costs’ include only those from breaches of personally identifiable information – it does not account for compromised sensitive customer information, lawsuits, fines or damage to brand.

More importantly, though, compromised data will cost you the trust of your customers and probably their ongoing business. Earning your customers’ trust by securely managing their private information is essential to maintaining and growing in success.

A simple step in greatly improving document security is to implement a document management solution that can track document-related activities on the network, automatically enforce rules, authenticate users and protect sensitive documents.

There are document management solutions available for organisations of all shapes, sizes and budgets. Ricoh’s expertise and experience in this field offers the ability to implement tailored solutions individual to each business’ needs, including the ability to work within strict guidelines such as the Australian Federal Government’s ISM Protocol.

Other than preventing security breaches, they also offer a host of features and benefits that help improve accountability and cost control. This can be done through the enforcement of duplex printing, limiting the use of colour printing, eliminating waste from uncollected print outstand the centralising of fleet management.

* 2010 Annual Study: Global Cost of a Data Breach, Research conducted by

Ponemon Institute, LLC, Sponsored by Symantic, May 2011

Top