As we approach the end of the decade in data protection, one question is looming in everyone’s minds: what will Santa get us for Christmas?

The rules of data protection have changed. With corporate espionage, semi-legal journalism and ransomware lining up to take a swing at sensitive data, the quiet of the night before Christmas has become a little more unsettling. A mouse may not be stirring, but other things might be. And it might not just be Santa coming down the corporate chimney this Christmas.

A message from Father Christmas

The good news is that the North Pole has been in touch. We’ve been keeping some of this year’s presents safe for Christmas HQ. And you’ll be glad to know, all the gifts are accounted for.

The jolly man himself, asked us to forward this urgent correspondence.

“I know, I know, I know. It’s natural to assume that you won’t be on the naughty list, ho ho, ho – sorry, rotten cough – on the naughty list this Christmas. After all you have been working very hard this year. And don’t think I don’t take that into account.

Trouble is, it’s not up to me who ends up with a lump of coal anymore. I’ve got all this – ho, ho – data stuff, that works that all out these days. That’s why you should listen to Scan Film or Store’s advice. I’ll be seeing you – and you won’t be seeing me – in the small hours of the 25^th ho, ho, ho – look stop transcribing my cough Rudolph, no one wants to read that…”

Turns out according to Datto’s latest ransomware report, 85% of Managing Service Providers are experiencing ransomware attacks on SMBs (small and medium sized businesses). And while these kind shepherds are doing an admirable job fighting off the wolves, it’s not quite enough.

The Scan Film or Store Christmas blockade

In celebration of all things festive, we’re offering an almighty defence against winter’s less-welcome intruders. We’ll take the wolves out of winter while you tend to that glass of mulled wine.

First in the line of defence is a firewall so hot that you could throw the One Ring into its flames. It would have made Frodo’s job a lot simpler if he had known about it.

Second in our blockade is the latest TrendMicro antivirus controls, primed to annihilate any blackened remains that stumble through the wall of fire.

We’ve armed our servers with uninterrupted power supply protection and mirrored drives. Nothing’s going down while this planet’s still spinning.

To top it all off, every night we’re going to be backing up our data and storing it in fireproof safes in a secure location. So even if everything gets lost, you lose nothing.

Finally, we’re accredited by the government backed Cyber Essentials scheme. So basically, if you back us, you can be sure we’ve got your back.

Still having doubts? We’ve got a fully documented Business Continuity Plan, so if disaster should strike, we can still continue working and protecting your records.

No-one’s getting coal for Christmas on our watch.

See it for yourself

Come and take a tour of our Armageddon-proof facilities. We’re just two minutes from the M5 at junction 23.

You’re welcome to ask our team anything – though they may have to kill you if they tell you everything. It’s a hazard of signing the Official Secrets Act. Our premises and security procedures are independently audited by our customers, ensuring the highest standards. We’d love to talk you through them.

And if there’s any message you’d like us to pass on to the man in red and white. We’d be happy to oblige.

If getting your data security sorted is on your Christmas Wishlist – or indeed your New Year’s resolution list – get in touch to see how we can help with everything from secure document storage to data destruction services.

Do you remember turning 10? The nearly uncontainable excitement of reaching double digits? A whole decade on the planet! Now that’s proper grown up.

Well, that’s exactly how we feel this month. Yes, dear reader, Scan Film or Store is 10 years old. And we are as excited as a kid who’s been eating sweets since breakfast and has just seen a clown car pull up outside the house.

It just seems quite unbelievable that we’ve been doing document scanning and storage, secure data destruction, microfilm conversion and the rest of it for such a long time!

A special present…

While we will no doubt be blowing out the candles and popping open the bubbles (none of the team is actually a 10-year-old, you understand – no underage drinking here, thank you) we thought our big birthday deserved something extra special.

And because our local community in Bridgwater is so important to us, we started thinking about how we could give back and say thank you for all the support that we’ve been given over the last decade.

That’s when our IT manager, Sophie, had a bright idea.

…with a serious backstory

Sophie has been part of the team at Scan Film or Store for seven years. Her mum, her aunt and her husband work here too. (See, we told you we were a team with strong family values!)

So you can imagine how much of a shock it was last year to hear that Sophie suffered a sudden cardiac arrest.

She was at home when it happened, caring for her 2-year-old daughter. Luckily her husband was also home and was able to give her CPR for 15 minutes until the ambulance arrived. When they did, they shocked her heart using a defibrillator before taking her to the hospital where her family were told she had a 50% chance of surviving.

She spent three days in intensive care, a further two weeks in hospital recovering and had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) fitted in case it ever happens again.

Help us save lives

Sophie has made a full recovery. But not everyone is so lucky.

Cardiac arrest can happen to anyone, at any age and at any time. That includes healthy people with no known heart problems or risk factors. The chances of surviving if you’re not already in a hospital are only 8%. But if you get CPR and early access to a defibrillator, those chances go right up.

That’s why the entire SFS team has now trained as first aiders and why, as part of our 10th birthday celebrations, we’re joining Sophie’s fundraising efforts to buy and install a public access AED (automated external defibrillator) at SFS HQ here in Bridgwater.

We want to make sure that we’re ready to step forward if anyone nearby needs our help, and we’ve been visiting the other businesses on the Woodlands Court Business Park to raise awareness of sudden arrhythmic death syndrome.

If you’d like to wish us a happy birthday, we couldn’t ask for a better present than your donations on Sophie’s Just Giving page. Thank you for supporting us in our first 10 years of trading and we hope your generosity will help us to save other lives with the new AED.

If you’re tired of working at ground level, your options are as follows: train to be a pilot, attach millions of balloons to your office building – Up style – or convert to digital. Granted this last option might not give you the same dazzling view, but digitisation can still make your workload feel lighter than stratus-shaped water vapour. We may not be meteorologists, but we can tell you that these digital clouds are worth getting your head into. Here’s why:

Anywhere, anytime baby

Often on the move? Working in multiple locations? Stranded in an airport while your airline goes on strike again? Cloud technology means you don’t need to wait for that plane to take off before you can rise above it all. So long as you have a connection to the world wide web (and if not find your nearest coffee shop of choice), you’re only a click away from all the documents and data you need. Getting to grips with the business of the day has never been easier.

Collaboration in the cloud nation

If you have a team, several teams or even a couple of companies working on the same project, digitisation will take you beyond the pearly gates. Cloud storage means everyone can work at the same time on the same document from different locations. This creates the conditions for faster document creation and easier alteration = allowing your work to speed ahead without calling in the couriers. Even if you’re only sitting across a desk from a single collaborator, cloud storage will save you from printing and passing papers with every edit. You’ll have instant access to the entire database of documents you need.

If the world ends, it’s not a problem

When MC Hammer sung “Can’t Touch This” in 1990 he probably wasn’t referencing his secure data files. But now corporates can get up on their desks and dance along, knowing that their hard work is safely out of harm’s way. Cloud storage places your files in the digital version of Fort Knox, out of reach of thieves and ground level disasters. It used to only be cockroaches that could survive nuclear fallout. But cloud storage means you can safely start World War III and still leave behind a good audit trail.

Springboard into the next big thing

If Back to the Future’s predictions of 2015 were anything to go by, we would be eating re-hydrated pizza and enjoying a 1500ft view while trying to make it through the evening sky-traffic. When it comes to technological forecasts, humanity seems to watch the skies without much success. There’s no telling what might be around the corner in the digital world, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get ready for it.

You may have good reason for holding onto your analogue and paper documents, but you’ve also got nothing to lose and a lot to gain by digitising. Apart from anything else, your data will be nimble – capable of converting to any format you desire – paper, CD, microfilm, microfiche, harddrive. It’s like keeping your documents as a liquid that can be quickly cast into any shape. So when the next wave of digital innovation sweeps over us, you’ll be more than ready to ride it.

The sky is waiting. Whether it’s time to wave farewell to your beloved physical files, or you need to hold onto those keepsakes, it’s certainly time to climb into the Cloud. Check out our range of data conversion services or get in touch to work out which solution will best suit your needs. We may not be able to fix the flying mechanics on your 1985 DeLorean, but we can still launch you into the clouds.

Document shredding and data destruction done correctly can make all the difference for company security. It can also completely change the plot of many Hollywood films. Here’s a rundown of how some of them might have played out, had the characters known we existed.

Star Wars: A New Hope

The Emperor could have fulfilled his ambition to rule the universe forever, if it hadn’t been for leaked documents. The Death Star, formidable as it was, had its critical weakness exposed because someone didn’t destroy the blueprints. If they had embraced document shredding, Luke would not have destroyed the original and might never have had the chance to confront Darth Vader. Palpatine, you should have gone to SFS.

Saving Private Ryan

An order to retrieve a soldier from the front lines because his mum wants him home? You could risk the lives of your men to fetch him, or you could hand the order to SFS and let us vanish it from existence. Ryan doesn’t even want to be retrieved. So why go all that way, Tom Hanks? Why go?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Because no good Star Wars trilogy can start without a leaked document, The Force Awakens’ entire plot is built around a ‘Map to Skywalker’ that presumably was drawn by the man himself, even though he did not want to be found. Perhaps he needed to archive the information somewhere in case he couldn’t remember where he was. Of course, a different level of security is needed when Kylo Ren can extract the map from your memory using the Force. So far at SFS, we’ve not had to deal with such a situation. 

WALL-E

All the memories of earth were stored aboard the spaceship that kept humans suspended in space. If the (spoiler alert!) rogue autopilot had destroyed the data, no doubt humanity would have never returned. This would have been quite a sad ending, so it’s just as well they archived everything in digital format, ready to be uncovered by the most adorable robot ever seen.

The Hobbit

What do you do with a secret map leading to a secret entrance on a mountain housing a dragon who’s waiting for an excuse to destroy a city? You could go and wake up the dragon, get momentarily rich and then perish in fire. Or you could shred the map to make sure nobody ever does such a foolhardy thing. Still, we learn from our mistakes.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Let’s see Dumbledore, you’ve got a stone that would give Voldemort a chance to rise to power again? You could hide it behind a matrix of trolls, three-headed dogs, living chess pieces and a magic mirror. Or you could just put the stone in our state-of-the-art shredder. Our shredder would probably complain a little – it’s meant for document shredding after all – but it’s all in the name of stopping He Who Must Not Be Named.

So if you’re trying to stop a dark wizard or you’ve recently finished work on a Death Star, give us a bell. Or if there’s other less dramatic documents you need securely shredded, or data you need destroyed, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Document storage is a no brainer. It frees up space in your workplace, saves on storage costs and gives your business breathing room so it can grow in other areas. But what’s the best approach to document storage and how have you chosen to do it? Here some of the sillier ideas we’ve come across for storing documents and the savvy solutions we recommended instead.

Shipping it to Antarctica

Have you noticed how much space Antarctica takes up on a globe? Imagine how many secure warehouses you could put there. We know; the mind boggles. It’s only a matter of time before document storage companies make a move on the icy continent and recruit sea lions as alternative guard dogs. Protecting documents from the frost may prove tricky though, as would retrieving the documents at speed.

Secure, super-fast retrieval

We might not have figured out frozen tundra storage yet, but we do have sites that are protected and restricted access. So they’re probably even tougher than an ice shelf for data thieves to get at. The other advantage is that we can retrieve and deliver archived documents to you within a matter of hours. It might not be like having a vault in Antarctica, but it is like having your own secure compound just down the road, with easy access for you and no one else.

Recruiting Sherlock Holmes

The guy remembers everything. He’s uses that Mind Palace thing and could probably store all the world’s sensitive data inside his head. We’ve been trying to recruit him as a consultant for a while. Unfortunately, we can’t seem to get hold of him. Of course, there’s a rumour going around that he’s not actually real… but he’s faked his own death before, so he’s probably just as capable of faking his non-existence.   

Advanced barcode tracking

In the absence of the famous detective, we’ve still got a savvy way to keep tabs on everything we’re storing. Our advanced barcode tracking system logs everything within our auditable document management system, ensuring your documents are effortlessly tracked and traced. It’s our very own Mind Palace.

Shrink rays

Zapping everything till it fits into a small desk drawer would be wonderful. But we can’t seem to find a shrink ray that works. Of course, we’d also need a growth ray that could zap documents back to their original size, or else we’d have to supply our clients with complementary microscopes. Perhaps we haven’t thought this one through.

Other ways to make it micro

“Honey, I Shrunk the Documents to a Manageable Size,” might not make for the most exciting Hollywood title, but it can still bring you joy. Converting documents to microfiche or microfilm can create secure back-ups of critical information that are guaranteed to last for 500 years (unless you want us to destroy them for you). We can take care of the micro conversions in addition to or instead of storing the original hard-copy records.

Unless of course, you are ready to fully embrace…

Going digital

Everything’s going digital these days (except a few things like gardens and teeth). It’s not just a trend to follow aimlessly, it is a secure and efficient way to store sensitive data. We have a scan on demand retrieval service that can return documents to you electronically within two hours, should you need them.

Essentially, our savvy solutions (if we do say so ourselves) stop you from worrying or wasting time on document storage and retrieval, which means you get to focus on your business instead. Which is the way things should be. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you thrive, or you’ve managed to locate Sherlock Holmes, don’t hesitate to get in touch.