What happened?

Benchling has recently fixed an issue and completed a review of our system. Benchling found some items in tenants that were unarchived without a corresponding audit record. This could have occurred in either of the following ways

1. When users unarchived objects that were originally archived as part of folder items archived with their parent folder. As a result, all items originally archived together would also become unarchived without notifying the user. This issue impacted any unarchiving events matching this scenario between May 2023 and June 2024.  
2. In very rare cases, an object that was unarchived through normal operations did not have a corresponding audit event recorded

Example Scenario for this Issue 

This issue arose in scenarios like the following:

1. Folder A was archived by a user, which would also archive its contents such as Entry1 or Entity2.
2. A user then moved Entry1 (an archived object) from Folder A (an archived folder) to Folder B (an unarchived folder).
3. When the user unarchived Entry1, then Folder A and all its contents (e.g., Entity2) were silently unarchived as well.

This was present between May 2023 and June 2024 and may have impacted any unarchiving events during that period that match this scenario. Audit records will only exist for the intentionally unarchived object and will not be present for the unintentionally unarchived object(s). 

How do I know if I am Impacted?

Not all customer tenants were affected by this issue. If you would like to know if you and specific objects in Benchling were affected, please reach out to Benchling support by emailing support@benchling.com with the subject: ‘Unintentional Archival Issue’. 

We have identified the tenants that contain at least one object that was unintentionally unarchived as a result of this issue. We want to give you the option to choose how you’d like to handle these objects, especially since they may have been used or updated since being unarchived.

What are the options to resolve this issue?

Benchling recommends reviewing the impact list of objects with your compliance team. After, you can handle these unintentionally unarchived objects in one of the following ways:

1. Re-archive all unintentionally unarchived objects: Benchling can automatically re-archive any object that wasn’t moved or altered after it was unintentionally unarchived. Contact support@benchling.com if you’d like us to perform this for you.
2. Leave the objects unarchived: If you prefer, you can choose to leave the objects in their current unarchived state.
3. Evaluate on a case-by-case basis: You can review each object and decide whether it should be re-archived or left unarchived.

What are the next steps?

If you would like us to re-archive the unintentionally unarchived objects (Resolution Option 1), please reach out to support@benchling.com. We are happy to assist you in re-archiving any items that qualify for automatic re-archiving.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Should you have any questions, feel free to contact us for assistance by emailing support@benchling.com and including in the subject: ‘Unintentional Archival Issue’.