Hurricane-Proof Your Document Management System

As hurricane season in the U.S. comes to a close, we have seen widespread devastation well into the billions of dollars. Hurricane Florence alone has already caused an estimated $44 billion in damage. Even after the storm passed, residents of the Carolinas had to brace for massive flooding that will likely cause that figure to climb.

Businesses up and down the East Coast were also affected by the storm. With power outages and floods threatening their ability to stay up and running, there has been much activity keeping corporate operations above water.

Also at risk are the millions of paper documents that many companies keep stored on-site or with third-party warehouses. These documents present a huge risk when it comes to natural disasters, whether you are talking about hurricanes, floods, fires, or other catastrophes. Once those physical documents are gone, the information they contain is gone. Making copies to store off-site offers some protection; but if your off-site storage facility is nearby, then those copies are potentially at just as much at risk as the originals.

Digital document management combined with off-site backup and data recovery systems are the only the way to protect your data and documents and ensure business continuity.

Consider what happened to hospitals in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. According to this article published by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), millions of paper medical records were lost in the aftermath of the storm. After the waters receded, many health facility employees could not return to work, and many facilities closed.