News

Last month, Compu-Stor celebrated 30 years in business as a family owned business, transforming from a WA based document storage business and growing into a national information management company. Compu-Stor is proud of our heritage and our longevity in the business and the fluidity we have to continually innovate to remain relevant and continue to deliver products and services to help our customers. Before document management was an official business function, most businesses kept all their files in filing cabinets, and depending on the size of the business, rooms would be dedicated to keepi...

What price would you put on the information your business creates, saves and shares? Information about proprietary products and services – that’s valuable – after all, it’s your IP. What about information on your customers? It certainly helps to know your customers and what their purchasing habits are. What about day to day work product, emails, word docs, spreadsheets? These are your everyday work activities that would be frustrating to have to recreate if you lost them. When placing a price on preserving your organisation’s data integrity, it’s important to recognise that the true cost to yo...

Setting up the right record keeping system for your business will help you work efficiently, meet legal requirements and strengthen customer and staff relationships. Good record keeping can help you protect your business, measure your performance and maximise profits. There are certain record keeping requirements for businesses across all states of Australia, and depending on your industry, there may be specific laws and requirements related to your sector. Here we look at the three different types of ways businesses hold and store documents. The Hoarder At work, hoarders tend to hold on to pr...

Family continues to drive growth of Compu-Stor products and services Australia’s largest family owned document storage and information management business, Compu-Stor, is celebrating 30 years in business this month. The same year the West Coast Eagles made their debut, and Scott married Charlene in Neighbours, Compu-Stor was first realised by Peter Manford, who had gained his experience working at Brambles Manford. Brambles Manford was the result of a buyout of the original Manford family business by Brambles, who for a time operated under the Brambles Manford name. Today, Peter’s sons, Jeremy...

Compu-Stor is proud to continually implement new and improved systems, policies and procedures, reinforcing our ongoing commitment to health, safety, environment and quality. This commitment is shared across the entire organisation and is deeply embedded in our company’s culture and business processes. We are thrilled to have recently updated our certification ISO 14001 Environmental, ISO 9001 Quality and AS/NZS 4801 OH&S. Compu-Stor achieved this third-party triple certification through Bureau Veritas, a world leader in testing and inspection ad certification services. While ISO certifica...

The development of digital technologies has resulted in the convenience of expanding knowledge. This access to at your fingertips data means businesses owners are able make business decision in almost real time, making a real impact on the business bottom line. It’s a simple formula:  Data = Information = Knowledge The purpose of an information management system is the quick and economical retrieval of files. A robust information management system should offer instant access to all your records in a way that is easy to search and retrieve. Furthermore, a good system will also facilitate w...

A single source of truth is a single point of access and modification for a data element. It requires that all access is for the same copy of data. In records management, it comes down to structuring and modelling the system so that every data element, in this case records, is stored exactly once. Single source of truth is a practice and strategy that helps to ensure that data is reliable, accurate and secured. Recently, public sector directed news site,  The Mandarin , talked about the Government’s move to a digital-first footing and the opportunity digital transformation poses for busin...

With the passing of the Notifiable Data Breaches Bill, all entities will need to now report data breaches to the Australian Information Commissioner. The essential goal of this mandatory reporting legislation is to avoid data breaches and to mitigate and limit the negative impacts when data is lost or stolen. While the laws will give  Australia some of the strictest disclosure rules in the world , this new legislation only covers Australian Government agencies and private organisations with an annual turnover of more than $3 million, the same threshold as the Australian Privacy Act introd...

In February this year, the Australian Senate passed a bill establishing a mandatory requirement to notify the Privacy Commissioner and affected individuals of ‘eligible’ data breaches. The Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Act 2016, amends Australia’s Privacy Act 1988 and is slated to take effect on February 22, 2018 if no earlier date is proclaimed. The new Notifiable Data Breach Bill covers most Australian Government departments and agencies – except for intelligence agencies, as well as all private sector and not-for-profit organisations with annual revenue of AU$3 million (US$2....

Records management and storage were once just about managing records and tracking boxes; however, digitisation has increased and with it the real threat of security breaches. IBM’s 2016 Cyber Security Intelligence Index highlighted that there has been a shift in online targets of record theft, essentially away from credit cards and toward health-related data. Health records are a key target for identity theft, and a fully populated medical record is a more lucrative grab than credit card data. Credit card data, on average sells for as little as $1 whereas according to Rich Ferguson, country ma...

Compu-Stor was recently honoured to be the focus of a feature article in Business News WA Nov-Dec 2016 edition. The article looks back at the history of Compu-Stor while looking forward to new products and services. Excerpt from the article  –   Compu-stor moves with the times Business News December 2016 The Compu-stor business has changed substantially since it was established, and is continuing to evolve. The core business was physical document storage, and added to that have been services such as document destruction and pallet storage. The biggest change has been the move to digi...

The prominent rise of hackers accessing large corporate data sources has created a completely different landscape for the Data-breaches data security industry. In response to this, the Federal Government has released an exposure draft of new mandatory data breach notification laws that will form part of the Privacy Amendment (Notification of Serious Data Breaches) Bill 2015. Originally earmarked to be implemented in the first half of 2016, these new laws are still in review however will mandate that any business, corporation, or government organisation must report the ...

The rapidly evolving technology space presents unique and complex challenges for records mangers and the organisation of digital records. To address the rise of digital content, our increasing reliance on it and how it changes the way we manage our records, Compu-Stor has recently created a new Head of Digital role. Stephen Wellington has joined Compu-Stor as Head of Digital. Stephen brings to Compu-Stor decades of experience in digital and the records management field driving operational efficiencies through digital technology and designing large scale transformation projects that deliver rea...

When professional practices say they are “digitising” their records these days, what many of them mean is that they are just scanning their documents as PDFs. But this isn’t a robust records management solution. Why? Scanned PDFs do not inherently provide information management capabilities like search, sort and others. A real records management solution provides: meaningful ways to search data meaningful ways for professional practices to analyse data analysis of information trends general information on clients All these benefits were previously unavailable with paper-based records (or ...

Heads up, business owners: the smaller guys in records management are being swallowed up by the big fish. So, what does this mean for you, and for the safety and integrity of your important records? As you know, secure document storage is becoming an increasing challenge for businesses. We only need to look at the frequency of information management and accountability problems reported in the news to know that secure record management is more important than ever. The Compu-Stor Difference Compu-Stor is proudly an 100% Australian owned and operated family business specialising in information ma...

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recently released new International Standards for record management. The need for the updated ISO is to address the rise of digital content and our increasing reliance on it and how it changes the way we manage our records. As an industry leader in developing record management solutions for a wide range of corporations across different industry sectors, Compu-Stor actively ensure our systems are designed to ensure records are made and kept properly, resulting in a range of business-enhancing benefits. What is ISO? ISO 15489-1:2016 define...

Secure information management is a growing challenge for businesses in the digital age. The recent concerns raised about telecommunications giant Telstra  holding our healthcare records  highlights negative public sentiment surrounding offshore data holding. It has reminded people again of the real, significant privacy and security issues associated with offshore data storage, including accidental exposure of ultra-personal data. This has prompted us to highlight three main reasons to use a local information management company, and how that can help ensure the integrity of sensitive ...

Big data is one of the most hyped terms on the market today. It’s one of the most popular search terms by CIOs and other IT professionals. However, innovation, cultural change, analytical mindset and new skills are required to be proficient at leveraging it. Digital transformation is all about the transitioning of static document processes to a digital format, for use within internal systems to streamline and improve business processes. By digitising paper based workflows, businesses and companies can improve processes and efficiencies. Digital Transformation Solutions is a new division of Com...

1 in 200 people are homeless on any given night. Every year,  Vinnies Australia  host the  Vinnies CEO Sleepout . One of the company directors, Jeremy, has been supporting the CEO Sleepout for seven years and has raised $34,971 for the organisation to date. Jeremy will be participating again this year on the 23rd of June with the aim to take that total to over $40,000. Help us make a difference by making a donation today to  Jeremy’s CEO Sleepout  or  YGAP . All donations will go towards providing crucial assistance to people experiencing homelessness. Compu-Stor ...

Regardless of what type of business you are in, there will always be a level of obligation in relation to records management and compliance. These often mandatory requirements are in place essentially to ensure the privacy and security of everyone’s data and information as well as the lawful operation of every enterprise. So how can we be sure that we are keeping up with the standards expected of our records and information management systems? And sometimes the question should be more related to the systems themselves that help facilitate these compliance requirements. The efficient and compre...