AI Responsibly with ndMAX
When COVID-19 hit, every single company got a crash-course in disaster recovery as their workforce shifted to working from home, nearly overnight. For law firms and corporate legal teams, some scrambled to help employees determine new processes and navigate clunky VPNs, while others enjoyed another day of work in their favorite chair at home. The difference? Whether they were utilizing on-premises or cloud-based document management.
Alvin Tedjamulia, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at NetDocuments, sat down with Ian Kujawa, VP of Partnerships and Corporate Sales at Litera, to discuss three key considerations when selecting a cloud-based document management system (DMS) to ensure productive employees, secure documents, and happy end-users.
With the shift to working from home, some companies have been surprised at the productivity increases they are experiencing. Free of office distractions, employees are beating deadlines and taking on more work. In fact, NetDocuments customers in particular have enjoyed a 20% increase in overall productivity based on recent platform measurements.
But what has helped these firms reach these unforeseen productivity levels? That answer lies in the consistent user experience provided by cloud-based software. Because even as lawyers and their staff shifted work locations, the actual processes for completing work remained intact—a solid foundation for employees to build upon even during uncertain times.
Maintaining document security on an unmanaged home network is any IT leader’s nightmare. Luckily, a cloud-based DMS can be a the key to maintaining document security away from the office.
During his chat with Kujawa, Tedjamulia noted there are “3 A’s of Document Security” that every firm should ensure their DMS features: Authentication, Access Control, and Action Control.
The first step in securing documents is addressing who is accessing them. Two-step authentication is the current industry-standard for any software, but especially cloud-based software that can be accessed anywhere and on any device.
Addressing what users can access is the second step in securing documents no matter where they’re accessed. While many DMS give users the ability to control access at the repository or matter level, robust DMS enable users to add controls at the document level. This document-level security ensures that every piece of information can be managed and secured.
The third, and potentially most important step, in ensuring document security is how users can interact with a document. Threat managers have historically been the industry-standard, offering alerts when suspicious actions pile up. In contrast, the new industry-standard data loss prevention or DLP software prevents actions from ever taking place, thereby securing your documents from inappropriate behaviors.
Ensuring your DMS has each of these features will help IT leaders rest-easy knowing that no matter where an employee is the data is safe and secure.
A DMS is core to legal work, which means if the system is down firms are losing money. That’s why an important step in the DMS selection process is understanding your prospective software’s uptime history. NetDocuments maintains an average 99.99% uptime, ensuring our customers and their employees always have what they need to complete work on time and without frustration.
Choosing a new DMS that will ensure your firm’s success requires a committee focused on selecting software that will address the business’ needs today, in the future as you grow, and in cases of emergency. There is no right answer, but one thing is clear: those firms who took the step to adopt robust, experienced cloud-based document management are the ones most equipped to adjust to changing circumstances.
Watch Litera Partner Series: Platform Security to learn more about Alvin Tedjamulia’s recommendations for selecting a DMS.
