Independent Legal Opinion Asserts Fulfillment of Legal Requirements to windream
Independent Legal Opinion Asserts Ideal Fulfillment of Legal Requirements at Highest Level to windream
June 20, 2011 | Bochum. – windream GmbH for the second time assigned an independent lawyer’s office specialized in the testing and legal evaluation of IT systems to check the compliance of their ECM system. The evaluation and the legal opinion created on this basis arrived at the conclusion that windream fulfills the legal requirements in Germany, but also in Austria and Switzerland, ideally and at the highest level.
Already in 2006, windream GmbH ordered a legal opinion in order to have the compliance of the most current windream version at that time, version 4, asserted by a reputable institution. Already back then, the evaluation concluded that windream fulfilled the legal requirements towards an ECM system “to the full extent”. The findings of the new legal opinion do not only refer to the legally relevant archiving functions of the most recent windream version 5.0, but are also valid for Austria and Switzerland.
Results of the legal evaluation
Summarizing the results of the evaluation, the legal opinion draws the conclusion that that with windream, legally relevant electronic declarations and documents can be compliantly archived in accordance with the guidelines of commercial and fiscal law. Thus, the evidential quality of archived documents is guaranteed.
The legal opinion also asserts that, thanks to the cryptographic security functions of the windream archive, compliant archiving can even be achieved on changeable media – e.g. on regular hard disks, RAID, NAS and SAN. The legal opinion emphasizes the fact that the new functions of the current windream version 5.0 have been integrated under consideration of the compliance of the ECM system in its entirety. Therefore, windream fulfills the "legal requirements of German, Austrian and Swiss law ideally and at the highest level."
Strict evaluation criteria
The legal opinion is based on a detailed test of the current windream version 5.0 and the integrated high performance windream archive, version 6.0. The tests were carried out in May 2011, according to a list of criteria determined by the evaluating expert. These criteria, among other things, included the exact fulfillment of the requirements formulated in the HGB (Handelsgesetzbuch/German code of commercial law), in the BGB (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch/German civil code), in the Abgabenordnung (German fiscal code) and in the “Grundsätze der ordnungsmäßigen Buchführung“ (GoB/“Guidelines on Compliant Accounting“) and the “Grundsätze zum Datenzugriff und zur Prüfbarkeit digitaler Unterlagen (GDPdU/”Guidelines on Data Access and the Verifiability of Digital Documents”). Furthermore, the evaluation is based on the requirements of the Sarbanes Oxley Acts (SOA) and Basel II as international evaluation standards. The legal opinion specifically includes the legal situation in Austria and Switzerland into its final results.
A safe investment for companies
With this independent legal opinion, not only companies already working with windream, but also companies considering investing in an electronic ECM system receive a long-term safety guarantee for planning and investments, since windream entirely fulfills all legal requirements. The legal opinion is available at windream GmbH on request.