Attention CEOs. This blog is for you.

The biggest security risk to your organization is on your desk. It’s where visitors enter your business. It’s throughout your finance department. It’s in your HR office. It’s across your warehouses and in your delivery trucks.

It’s paper.

Did you know that 40% of all data breaches are paper-based and 14% of those data breaches are due to loss or theft?

CEOs like yourself are rightly worried about cybersecurity and the associated risks and liabilities. Yet, paper is also a security or compliance threat.

You probably haven’t given much thought to all the paper your organization generates. But all it takes is one lost or stolen sheet to facilitate a data breach.

Here’s why you should digitize paper to protect the business.

 

Paper Is Everywhere and Tough to Track

Imagine your business prints 2,000 sheets of paper each day. Ask yourself:

• Do you know what’s being printed?
• Can they be retrieved quickly if required?
• Are they stored and secured in accordance with compliance regulations?

Think about all the data that’s written down: customer details, credit card numbers, addresses. People share that information with your business under the assumption that it will be protected. A lost or stolen paper document dissolves that trust.

The responsibility is yours, as is the liability. By the end of 2024, 75% of CEOs will be held personally liable for cyber-physical security incidents.

 

The Risks and Consequences of Paper Documents

Approximately 7.5% of all paper documents get lost. If they get found, it’s usually at a great cost to the organization. Look at these paper-based data breach statistics (in USD):

• A medical center faced a $1.5 million fine for disposing paper-based records in a dumpster.
• A health system was fined $800,000 for having boxes of records in an employee’s driveway.
• A retailer paid nearly $28 million for not properly destroying paper-based customer data.

It’s a simple equation: the more paper you generate, the more that gets lost, leading to greater risks of facing a compliance fine or penalty because of it.

 

You May Not Know When a Paper-Based Data Breach Occurs

What’s on your desk? Notebooks? Forms? Sticky notes? If it’s written down, someone can see it, copy it or take it.

Still not convinced? Head down to where visitors sign in. Is there a paper form? Up to 70% of visitors admit to peeking at other people’s personal information in a guestbook.

That’s a data breach.

If that information is stolen, compromised or used maliciously, you’re responsible because you didn’t protect it.

Paper-based data breaches aren’t always malicious. Documents are accidentally sent to, or picked up by, unauthorized personnel. Papers are forgotten about in unsecured locations. All of these are examples of data breaches.

 

Paper Is Just Too Risky

Ever get caught passing notes in class? It was a terrifying experience. The note was intercepted and information that certain people shouldn’t see was now in front of them.

As a CEO, the stakes are much higher than classroom gossip. The average cost of a data breach is over $4 million (USD). Once a paper document is out of your possession, it’s out of your control. Someone can share it, copy it or exploit the information on it.

 

Eliminate Paper-Based Security Risks

Protecting against paper-based data breaches is easy. Just get rid of the paper.

Remember those records found in the driveway or the people that accidentally possess documents they shouldn’t have? All of those issues are mitigated substantially when you digitize paper.

Companies lose paper documents every 12 seconds. In other words, by the time you finish reading this sentence, a sheet of paper potentially containing sensitive information could be lost, forever.

Paper is everywhere and easy to misplace. Digital forms don’t get lost. They don’t get stolen. They can be protected to prevent unauthorized sharing or copying.

That’s because digitization controls who uses these forms, where they’re stored and who has access to them.

Now, you’re probably wondering, how do I quickly digitize paper?

 

Digitize Paper with SOTI Snap

SOTI Snap quickly digitizes the paper forms and documents that are powering your business operations.

Instead of waiting months – and hoping you don’t fall victim to a data breach – SOTI Snap digitizes paper documents fast. Endless piles of paper become easy to track with digital files. Lost documents are a thing of the past and so is worrying about people having access to data they shouldn’t.

Paper is a security problem. SOTI Snap solves it in minutes.

Want to try SOTI Snap for yourself? Want someone on your team to check it out? Here’s where to start.