London fire raises issues for companies storing paper

Warehouse fire 12th July 2006

On the 12th July 2006 a fire in London where the storage of critical companies paper records were held totally destroyed all of the records stored within the building beyond the point of viable recovery.

This fire has raised serious questions about how companies manage their document archiving needs, not least of all in order to meet industry regulatory and compliance requirements.

The fire reveals how vulnerable company records are when stored in hardcopy format, even in modern purpose built facilities.

Companies have no choice but to store certain types of records, but they do have a choice about how to store them. Many will now be making urgent changes to their Document Management programmes in order to offset the risk and improve efficiencies. By converting important business documents from paper to digital formats, which can be held in multiple locations, disasters such as this one at Iron Mountain can be avoided.

 If you would like to discuss the alternatives to traditional paper storage, then please contact us on freephone 0800 328 9931.