A major change in the mindset of the records protection industry is occurring and I wonder if the records management and information governance managers are truly aware of this change.

Are you aware of this change?
Has your management team discussed these changes to see if there are negative ramifications?
Are there risks developing here that could endanger your organization in litigation or shareholder responsibilities?

Sentry Safe has recently withdrawn from manufacturing of insulated file cabinets, data safes and other records protection products.  They are one of the two largest manufacturers in the U.S.  What is interesting is that there was no merger where they joined with Fire King or others in the market.

Sentry Safe simply laid off 400 plus workers and closed their U.S. Facilities.  They announced that the amount of paper being protected and stored was dramatically reducing each year and they were shutting down their facilities.  (Mosler Safe, LeFebure and many others preceded this loss of protective equipment.)

In talking with other companies in the records protection field; they also commented on the reduction in paper records.  This will accelerate the move to dominant electronic records. The Cloud will continue to grow.

One might take a look at the offsite storage industry where the benchmarks that are telling is that the Industry has reduced from 1,500 operators to less than 250. Meanwhile the shredding industry has grown dramatically from a few hundred to over 1000 different players.  Management is much more focused on reducing paper than storing paper.  

C-Level managers looking for cost savings see the Cloud as no-brainer.  No pun intended….

Big IT says that this is the result of onerous hostage fees. An industry that thought there was no limit on how much they could penalize a client for removing a box from storage experimented with $3.00 to $6.00, moved in short order to $10.00 to $12.00 and in some markets the hostage fee for removing a box from storage was above $20.00.  Somewhere along the way the offsite storage industry forgot that offsite storage is meant to reduce the cost of keeping the box by moving it from an office setting to a warehouse with low real estate and bulk storage costs.

Records management will be much more in the realm of the IT Department; and, based on a joint task force of National Fire Protection Association Technical Committees for “Protection of Records” and  “Fire Protection of Information Technology Equipment” there is not a unified approach to the responsibilities of protecting electronic records.

But it is important to note that some of the methodology of protecting records hard copy is waning prior to the development of a solid strategy of protecting electronic records.  For those espousing the rise of Information Governance, you need to be aware that chaos is the new rule.

One could argue that the entrusting all records to the Cloud poses real concerns to long term records. The existence of paper records typically lasted until the Owner decided to shred it but this model is dramatically changed when the Cloud basically states that you are only stored in the Cloud for 5 years or until they migrate to new software or hardware technology.  At that point the migration costs doom the records; as management will not absorb those huge costs.

The Cloud will also follow the trends of other consolidated industries.  The biggest investor backed Clouds will absorb the smaller Clouds.  Choices will reduce just as they have in the offsite storage industry.  Clouds will become larger and larger with more and more risk exposure.  Practitioners will constantly seek to increase profits by cutting corners and the Owner of the records in the Cloud will have less and less influence just as you do now with your box records.

Microfilm went away. Paper is going away as a protected record.    Email replaced other correspondence and digital records has become the norm with no concern about hackers, sabotage and loss of records being financially supported by management.  Malware and Ransom-ware can make records non-existent.

There are so many actions taking place that corporations simply have no idea where they are in the world of records management.  When the IT Community comes to the records management community seeking guidance, they realize they are in a sea-change where they are acted upon by changes beyond their understanding.

So can you answer these questions:

Are you aware of this change in records protection across all the platforms?
Has your management team discussed these changes to see if there are negative ramifications?
Are there risks developing here that could endanger your organization in litigation or shareholder responsibilities? 


Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
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(610)  756-4440    Fax (610)  756-4134
WWW.FIRELOCK.COM


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