Filing in the Clouds

Cloud based services and storage products are now commonplace and often the subject of a lot of development and business growth. Music and videos are the obvious areas with both streaming and back up. Products such as Drop box, Hightail and Sharefile allow you to not only store in the cloud but to share with others as required. The cloud effectively promises on demand storage that is both cheap and scalable and for records managers has become an attractive proposition.

Before we start looking cloud jumping and looking for silver linings it is important to ask a few questions:

1. The most obvious question surrounds the legality of storing documents in the cloud, especially when you consider where your servers are located geographically. This then raises questions over who has the legal control of the documents and you need to consider if there are rules around where and how documents can be stored.

2. With the fast development of technology in the cloud, what may make sense today, may not in 12 months time. Service providers will change their operational methods and this can affect your ability to retrieve your records.

3. Retrieval times should be part of the service level agreement with your provider so your business is not hamstrung by delays, especially if there are time differences and human intervention required due to privacy rules.

4. Retention schemes need to be addressed not only to ensure you are not paying for storage longer than needed but to ensure your provider complies with the requirements of your retention and destructions regimes.

5. Privacy of records and the subject of the records must be assessed. Who has access, how is consent requested and managed and how can you audit these conditions?

6. Recovery; should the unthinkable happen are there duplicates? Is there a remote back up? And how will you get access to the back ups and how quickly?

Finally; write it all down. Written agreements and regular reviews of performance are necessary as is having a contingency plan ready to implement should it all turn to custard.

Going with your eyes open will hopefully ensure the only clouds your business faces are the electronic ones not the storm laden cumulonimbus.