Record Completion - 3.3.1 and 3.3.2

Good Afternoon Everyone,

i am hoping to get guidance on clause 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 in the BRC Global Standard - Agents and Brokers 2.

I work at a company that has approximately 30 employees, with a good portion of them being sales representatives.  We are in the process of implementing the requirements to meet BRC and i am writing the procedures to meet the clauses.

Many of the employees are cross functional example - the receptionist also does logistics coordination. Since we are small, and many people are cross functional - we do not have file restrictions for the files we keep on our electronic share drives.

All (or almost all) of the records we generate or receive are in an electronic format. we also try to limit having hard copies of files to save trees.

• Clause 3.3.1 states " Where records are in electronic form these shall be suitably backed up to prevent loss"

                - could anyone advise on how they interpret "suitably backed up" ?

                  my company has a daily backup download of information on our shared drives. this information is saved externally                          for up to 3 weeks.  After the 3 weeks the backup purges the information to save new data. Inventory records are kept                     in a separate traceability system which does not purge itself. Would this be "suitably backed up"?

• Clause 3.3.2 states " Records shall be stored securely" 

                - could anyone provide an example of how to store electronic files securely ? would file restrictions need to be in place                       to meet this requirement?

                - As i mentioned above, most of our records are electronic and we do not have file folder permissions because of the nature of our company.

Thank you, i appreciate all the help.

Hi,

Bear in mind that there is a difference between backup and archive. Your backup system seems fine while the dataset is building up. There will come a time when you don't want to work with all your data from ever in the past. At this point you will archive some off. BRC requires you to manage this archive so it is available for the shelf life (and beyond) of the product. this retention period also needs to be managed. What you currently have seems adequate as long as you can access all the relevant records easily.

As for security, you need to have the usual stuff such as password access (can be at logon), with each user having an individual account. IFS require completed records to be locked so they cannot be modified post completion. You might want to consider this.

Thank you !!!

Hi,

 

Bear in mind that there is a difference between backup and archive. Your backup system seems fine while the dataset is building up. There will come a time when you don't want to work with all your data from ever in the past. At this point you will archive some off. BRC requires you to manage this archive so it is available for the shelf life (and beyond) of the product. this retention period also needs to be managed. What you currently have seems adequate as long as you can access all the relevant records easily.

 

As for security, you need to have the usual stuff such as password access (can be at logon), with each user having an individual account. IFS require completed records to be locked so they cannot be modified post completion. You might want to consider this.

Hi Brummy, 

I thought if the company chooses to store the information electronically, the back up means the stored information should be available until specified retention period specified by the company.

And archive is to do with the hard copies stored in the safe place so that it can be accessible. Could you please help me if I got it right?

Regards

Gelcey

another easy thing to do is "store" the program and all associated documents on a stick...you can easily restart business in the event of a massive computer failure. You can even get your PC to "backup" to the stick every day at a set time

This is the method I use....very small company that does have it's own server, but I like the ease of the stick....computers are password protected but are all the same because we all wear more than one hat