How to Make Your Office Storage More Secure

Featured image courtesy of Invicta Mobile Shelving

Physical documents are still commonplace in most offices. However, the most common forms of office storage don’t do much to account for the security of documents and can cause lapses in terms of organization.

Many documents contain sensitive material. The need to protect this information is critical. It is even more pertinent with the advent of the GDPR.

Knowing where you have stored all of your customer and client information is critical. Additionally, you or your staff must organize it well and take steps to keep it safe. All of these aspects are integral to the data protection process.

Here then are a few ideas on how you can make your office storage more secure. In the process, you can also store more documents or other items in a smaller space.

Set Aside a Room in the Office for Archive Storage

If you have a large number of documents to keep track of—and to keep secure—the most logical step may be a dedicated archive storage room. This will ensure that you are keeping all of your documents in one place. Here you and your staff can easily organize and keep track of documents and other items. Using a closed room will also enable you to secure that room against intrusion. You can even use climate control if necessary to protect the integrity of sensitive documents.

If you already have an archive storage room that is filling up, you may be able to compact your existing storage. Where most storage rooms use simple shelving with separate aisles, a mobile shelving system could as much as double your available storage capacity. By placing mobile shelves on floor-mounted rails, the units can be levered apart. This creates a single aisle where you need it, compacting the other shelves which are not in use.

This kind of mobile shelving system adds an additional layer of security. This is because it gives you the ability to lock all of the shelves together when they are not in use.

You can also choose to color-code individual shelves if you like. In this way, you can denote their contents at a glance. On the other hand, you might prefer to simply label the shelf ends to indicate what each shelf contains.

The fact that the shelves are enclosed also keeps out any dust or light, an additional problem with a traditional open shelving system.

Make Use of Mobile Shelving

You can install mobile shelving in a dedicated storage room, but one of its great advantages with regard to office storage is its flexibility. Because you can lock the shelves together into a single unit when you are not using them means that, theoretically, you could install your mobile shelving anywhere. It’s not uncommon for doctors’ offices to install mobile shelving, for instance, keeping patient records secure and close at hand.

Mobile shelving allows for storage in areas that wouldn’t otherwise support it, due to the compact nature of the units. The rail-mounted shelves use low friction casters and either a manual crank or electric motors, allowing them to part smoothly. As they are compacted together, with only a single aisle opening at any given time, it’s also easier to find the shelf you need at a glance and reach it. You don’t need to walk along a full set of aisles.

As mobile shelving units tend to be purpose-built, they can be designed to your specific requirements. This can include modifications to keep specific sizes of documents and other items secure, including a range of boxes and trays. You can also customize them to blend into their surroundings or give them your company colors or logo.

Make Use of Rotary Storage for Office Files

Traditional filing cabinets are good at keeping documents organized. But they don’t always save you space. These systems tend to be extremely bulky. Moreover, many come with flimsy doors that open outward into the room. This limits where you can place your documents. It also means you may be wasting smaller spaces. Additionally, your filing cabinets could end up some distance away from where you need them.

Rotary storage solves these issues by condensing the space they require. Instead of exterior doors protecting a set of shelves, a rotary storage cabinet consists of a rotating shelving unit that sits inside a sleek chassis. When the system is not in use, the shelving unit can rotate 180 degrees. Then the back of the unit is facing forward, forming a single door in place of the usual double doors.

Because the door consists of the back of the unit, the cabinet is better protected than in traditional systems. For example, any illegal access requires the breaking of an internal lock on the rotary mechanism. When it is unlocked, this mechanism allows for the shelves to be smoothly and easily rotated in place, allowing for easy access. The lack of doors meanwhile allows rotary systems to fit in narrow areas such as corridors, making them a perfect ad hoc storage solution for any area.

Conclusion

Where most office storage systems are either plain shelves or bulky cabinets, mobile storage and shelving provides sleeker and more secure solutions. By upgrading to a mobile storage system, you can make your sensitive files and documents harder for the wrong people to access. Meanwhile, you make access easier for the right people while also saving space and improving efficiency.

About the Author

This post was written by James Beale, Operations Manager at Invicta Mobile Shelving. With more than 30 years of experience designing and installing mobile shelving and mobile storage systems, Invicta Mobile Shelving has built a legacy of trust with some of the world’s most prestigious institutions.