Audit Trail in Document Management Software

Organisations handling a high volume of documents and records are constantly exposed to the risk of heavy financial penalties and damaged reputation due to legal action or failing external audits.

As an alternative to a reactive, problem handling approach to compliance, the document management solution from UK software company DCS Ltd offers tools to help you implement best practices and deal proactively with compliance issues wherever documents are involved.

Captured documents – a good start

Paper documents entering a document management system are scanned and captured which creates a document image. A similar process captures emails and faxes as well as any electronic file held on your system such as Microsoft Word, Excel or PDF documents. Captured document images provide a useful record of the exact form in which a document, email etc. was originally received, which helps achieve good compliance.

Capturing documents, emails and faxes at the point of entry into the organisation enhances compliance management, and storing them securely further increases their value as records. Automatic storage in a secure system eliminates the risk of document loss through manual misfiling, and there is no risk of electronic documents becoming illegible over time. However, presentation of captured electronic document images may not satisfy the more exacting requirements for legal admissibility and compliance with BS BIP 0008.

Full audit trail with FileStore

To satisfy the more exacting demands surrounding the legal validity of electronic documents, it is necessary to prove the document has not been modified. Alternatively, it is also acceptable, and in some ways more advantageous, to be able to produce an accurate record or audit trail of all the actions and changes performed on a document during its retention lifecycle. The FileStore technology at the heart of DCS document management software includes an audit trail logging module to help achieve full legal admissibility for all your electronically stored documents.

Audit trail logging module – The FileStore audit trail logging module gives you the means to prove what has happened to each document at every stage in its lifecycle, providing an end-to-end audit log of who did what, when and why. Examples of the information recorded in the log include details of who created, viewed, edited, printed or emailed a document.

In addition to audit trail logging, FileStore includes further useful modules to help you manage compliance-related issues.

Mailstore – This module automatically captures all incoming and outgoing email messages to FileStore with full audit trails and preserves contextual links to any appended documents.

Legal discovery module – In order to respond quickly and effectively to disclosure requests, this module enables rapid discovery and production of evidence lists.

Active compliance module – Allows compliance managers to be instantly alerted to potential infringements detected in document or email content.