Why should an organization care about records management? When users throughout all departments are creating new records without a thought to how they are cataloged or tagged, the sprawl of records can become a real threat. Unstructured data can lead to compliance issues for highly regulated industries. When proper records management isn’t a top priority, content that should have been disposed of for security purposes is left vulnerable for anyone to find and distribute.  

Records and Information Management (RIM) is constantly changing and evolving as record managers begin to realize the benefits of automation in their daily operations. In my 6 years of consulting, I have seen everything from heavily manual business processes to automated document management solutions.  Even as time goes by, information professionals continue to face the long-standing hardship of trying to get end users to comply with either internal or external regulations when it comes to records management.  Lately, there has been an apparent shift from ridged business centric solutions to end user centric solutions. 

Once a year, members in the records management community come together for ARMA’s annual conference to discuss the latest advancements and best practices for modern information managers.  ARMA, the global authority of information management and governance, hosted this year’s conference, ARMA InfoCon, in Nashville, TN. While attendees were not in the typical “record” industry that Nashville is known for, the location called for a great mix of music and information management knowledge.  

SharePoint and Office 365 are the ideal platform for enterprise collaboration, and offer some enterprise-grade information governance features. The Microsoft platform provides excellent value on its own, but can easily be extended with third-party software to enable IG and records management features that provide industry leading compliance from within a system users can already understand.

A recent study by Sharegate highlights the growing popularity of SharePoint online across organizations. Not surprisingly given the overall IT culture today, SharePoint Online adoption is increasing.

Assuming the majority of the readers of this post are not technologists, I will define SaaS (Software as a Service) and the Cloud.  First, the Cloud and SaaS are not the same thing.  SaaS runs in the Cloud. 

Last week, a security researcher discovered something very troubling on Docs.com, Microsoft's free document-sharing site. The search bar at the top of the page allowed him to search through hundreds of documents with highly sensitive information.

A recent survey from AIIM highlights the drivers for organizations to undergo or re-evaluate their information governance and SharePoint records management initiatives.

As we've referenced before, more than half of all organizations have experienced a data-related incident. Out of those who reported an actual breach, half attributed it to hacking and the other half to employee negligence. Unfortunately, according to the report, about a third of these negligent acts were willful. Let's explore a few areas that are particularly high risk and can be solved by a complete SharePoint records management program.

When talking about SharePoint records management and implementing an overall information governance program, there are many factors to consider. As we look ahead to 2017, ensuring that all business units are involved and the organization as a whole has an in-depth understanding of the importance of information governance is a crucial first step. Let's discuss three other important considerations.