GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Base your Policies and Procedures on core principles

Iron Mountain helps you develop sound Policies and Procedures and integrate them into the fabric of your organization, following a core set of principles.

• Enterprise-wide: Develop a single set of policies and procedures to be applied across the entire organization.
• A lifecycle approach: Policies and procedures should address the complete lifecycle of corporate information: document creation, retention, storage and management of active and inactive files, access and authorization, secure disposal, and long-term retention of vital and historical records.
• ­­Consistent application and enforcement: Policies should be applied and enforced consistently for all records, media types (paper and electronic), devices (servers, desktops, laptops, etc.) and locations (onsite, offsite, and third-party) - with appropriate variations for local geographies.
• Technology-enabled: New technology-based records management solutions can improve the quickness and accuracy of your record archiving and retrieval practices.
• Ownership and accountability: Policies should spell out records management roles and responsibilities at every level of the organization and include accountability mechanisms. Audit capabilities should be put in place, allowing you to measure performance and demonstrate compliance.
• Communication and training: Training and awareness activities foster compliance by helping ensure a high degree of employee understanding and adherence to records management policies.