Gone are the days of stuffed filing cabinets full of documents and spending hours digging through them, trying to find what you need. Many businesses will still hold on to paper records, as they assume that they are more secure. With fears of cyberattacks looming, it can seem like storing everything digitally could put your documents at higher risk.
In reality, storing your data digitally in a virtual deal room provides an extra level of protection that paper records don’t. Here are some of the main reasons why storing data digitally is safer than paper records.
Controlled access
When you have data and records on paper, they can easily be accessed by anyone. If someone gets into a filing cabinet or leaves papers lying out, you have no control over who can get a hold of them. If someone does end up with the records, who isn’t supposed to have them, you don’t have any way to track it, meaning it often goes unnoticed. For this reason, keeping paper records is quickly becoming outdated.
Using a virtual deal room to store your data means you have complete control over who can access your data. You can set appropriate permissions based on the level of access you want staff to have and monitor any actions taken. You can see when someone views, edits, or shares a document, so you always know exactly what’s going on. On top of that, you can encrypt your documents so that the information is completely protected.
Can’t be tampered with
Since you can monitor every action taken on each document, no one can tamper with it. You will get a notification whenever there is a change made to a document and see who made that change and at what time. With paper records, it’s easy for anyone to take out pages, erase or add entries and tamper with the documents without any record. Someone could make copies of all your sensitive documents, and you would never even know. Using virtual deal rooms to store your data is the best way to keep your data from becoming corrupted or altered.
Loss of records
Paper files are notoriously easy to lose. One piece of paper getting accidentally thrown out can be detrimental to your business. Losing contracts, tax returns, or other important files is a huge hassle and could even have financial repercussions. When moving papers around or refiling, they can quickly become misfiled or lost entirely.
Digital records don’t get lost. You will always be able to find what you’re looking for quickly and easily. If anything is moved, there is an audit trail behind it so you can still locate it. Paper records don’t typically have backups, so if they become lost, there is nothing you can do. Using virtual deal rooms to store your data ensures there are multiple backups, so you’ll never need to worry about losing documents again.
Storing your data digitally is a no-brainer. Paper records are becoming outdated, and it’s easy to see why. With digital storage tools like virtual deal rooms, there’s no reason not to keep your records stored on the cloud, keeping them safe and secure.
