GDPR Compliance

How document scanning can help with UK GDPR Compliance

The UK GDPR means that organisations must pro-actively manage the ways in which they collect, store and process personal information. Ah-hoc systems are no longer acceptable. Document scanning, in conjunction with a document management system, will enable you to effectively manage the ways in which your company accesses, stores and eventually deletes the personal information it holds.

Document Security

Paper documents are by their very nature easy to copy, misfile or even steal. Digital documents however, even in a simple PDF format can be secured with passwords and the data encrypted.

Data Retention

All organisations processing personal information should have a data retention policy. With a document management system in place this can be done automatically but even with a simple PDF based folder structure it will be much easier to achieve compared to paper records.

Searching for Data

Paper documents filed in the traditional way are often difficult to locate due to misfiling, and it's even more difficult to search the contents of a large paper file. Under Article 17 of the UK GDPR is the right to erasure ("right to be forgotten"). It states, "The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay". Responding to such a request when all of the documents are still in paper form can be very time consuming and how sure could you be that all of the documents relating to the subject had been located? If your documents have been scanned and converted to searchable PDF's this process becomes much more straightforward. A simple search would reveal all related documents saving potentially hours of manual work and ensuring that requests such as this are completed in a timely manner.

How we can help

Having your documents scanned and stored in a cloud environment may be more cost effective and easier than you expect. It may well be the best way of ensuring that you meet the requirements of GDPR. Please get in touch now for a chat about what we can do to help.