EzeScan Evidence

EzeScan PRO now includes the EzeScan EVIDENCE functionality. EzeScan EVIDENCE extends the already great features of EzeScan PRO by adding MD5 digital signature generation capabilities.

Evidential Requirements

Are scanned images admissible in court? Ask 10 different people that question and you'll get 10 different answers.

Meanwhile, with the push towards the paperless office, more organisations will find themselves placed in a position where their businesses will rely more on electronic documents than hardcopy documents. Electronic documents are just much easier to distribute within an organisation.

Irrespective of whether a document will ever go to court there are certain processes that should be adhered to ensure that the authenticity of any document can be determined at any time during its lifecycle.

Document Scanning - Best Practice

An organisation should ensure that its scanned documents are captured with the following requirements in mind.

• The ability to prove where and when a hardcopy document came into an organisation.
  
• The ability to capture a hardcopy document as an image, at a resolution and colour depth that will allow faithful reproduction for viewing and printing purposes.
  
• The choice of a file format that will allow retrieval during the documents expected life.
  
• Adherence to regulatory requirements for the retention and destruction of the original hardcopy documents.
  
• Adherence to regulatory requirements for the retention and destruction of the scanned images.
  
• The ability to generate a digital signature for the image that represents the scanned document. This will allow the images authenticity to be verified at a later date and possible tampering of the image to be detected.
  
• The ability to provide an audit trail that clearly shows who has accessed the image during it lifecycle, and any subsequent versions generated using that image.

How can EzeScan help?

EzeScan used in conjunction with an EDRMS can help in these 7 areas by:

• Electronically stamping scanned document images to record details about the receipt of the document. The stamp is burnt into the image at scan time and can be retained for the life of the image.
  
• Providing full control of document scanners brightness, contrast or threshold settings, colour, and resolution to ensure that the highest quality images are produced during scanning.

Generating either TIF or PDF output file format. Many organisations are now adopting PDF as there long term file storage format for scanned documents.

• Hardcopy document retention and disposal is performed by a trained Record Management Unit person using one of the certified EDRMS systems.
  
• Integrating fully with the EDRMS document registration process, thereby making it easy to apply disposal schedules to documents as they are scanned into the EDRMS.
  
• Using the option "Use MD5" filename to generate an Md5 hash value for the scanned documents images. The MD5 hash value can be assigned to the filename, or EDRMS metadata field value, or both. An MD5 hash value is like a digital fingerprint fro each scanned document. If the scanned document is edited or tampered with the MD5 hash value will change from the original value that EzeScan calculated.
  
• Integrating fully with the EDRMS document registration process. The EDRMS will track a scanned documents usage and revisions during its lifecycle.