What You Need to Know about Vault and Confidential Storage

Imagine you lost all your sensitive documents. Your most valued business papers, the carefully written will of your father, an important legal contract or birth certificate. It would be a nightmare to replace many of these documents, especially if you didn’t have backups, and you’d spend a whole lot of time trying to sort out a problem you’d never thought of. Nobody wants to get stuck trying to replace a birth certificate when they’re applying for their child’s ID book. The same is true for your business documents. Confidential or highly important information is vulnerable to damage and theft, whether they’re placed on hardware or software. Fires, floods and vandalism or theft can often leave irreparable damage which in turn can have enormous financial, legal and time implications for businesses. Therefore, correct document management and storage is crucial if you’re to avoid any costly and stressful situations with lost or damaged items.

For sensitive or high value documents, businesses should consider confidential vault storage options. Regardless of the nature of your business or documents, these offer a secure place for your important and valuable documents.

Here’s what you need to know if you’re interested in keeping your valued documents safe in even the most testing circumstances.

What Is Vault Storage?

Vault storage involves keeping documents in a high-security vault which is designed specifically to protect sensitive documents. These file storage vaults are often flame proof, alarmed, and heavily secured. They protect documents from common threats such as fire, water damage, dust damage, loss or theft and are used by businesses to ensure that they can easily access their important documents. These systems form part of a larger document management system, meaning that you have access to important files and records at all times – and keep a safe copy stored somewhere at all times.

What Types Of Documents Can Be Stored?

Confidential and vault storage is not limited to only written documents. To the contrary, businesses or individuals can store DVD’s, media, audio or video files, photos and any other high value items. Important written or typed documents including policies, deeds, wills and so on are also commonly kept in these vaults. This document lifecycle guide shows you which documents could benefit from vault storage.

Why Can’t I Just Keep Them In A Safe At The Office Or At Home?

While you may not have been a direct victim of an event that destroys your documents, the chances are that you know somebody who has. When burglaries occur, thieves will often break open a safe or take it out of the wall as they’re aware that high value items are often stored there. Fires, floods or even electrical damage can often destroy these documents too – you may have seen photos of burnt down houses or office parks. Domestic safes and file storage systems are generally not robust or well protected enough to withstand such forces, and thus your documents are likely to be destroyed in the event of a natural disaster.

The Document Warehouse offers vaults with incredibly sensitive detectors which can detect a fire before it even combusts, and automatically triggers an alarm in the facility and at the monitoring station. For added fire and theft protection, the vaults are guarded by a four-hour fire rated solid steel door that is access-controlled. On top of this, the vaults offer humidity and temperature controlled environments, 24-hour CCTV which records all activity, as well as 24/7 monitoring of the vault. The structures have no windows, and backups are regularly collected. To ensure optimal safety, media is put in a tamper-proof bag with a serial number. In order to replace the media, the sealed bags are delivered to you and you need to break the seal – any tampering will be evident.