When a correspondent recently asked about "version control for audit, compliance, and security considerations," it hit on something most L&D professionals don't think about until it's too late.

Here's the scenario: An employee claims they weren't trained on a specific safety procedure. Legal needs proof of what that training actually contained six months ago. Can you produce it?

If you're running a traditional SCORM-based LMS, the answer might be uncomfortable.

The SCORM Versioning Trap

Traditional LMS platforms treat courses as static files—ZIP packages exported from authoring tools like Articulate or Captivate. When regulations change or content needs updating, you're stuck with two bad options.

Option 1: Overwrite the file. Upload a new ZIP with the same name. The problem? If you've changed the course structure—added a quiz, removed a slide—it often breaks tracking for employees mid-course. Progress resets. Completion records get corrupted. And you've just destroyed your historical evidence of what the previous version contained.

Option 2: Upload as a new course. Now you have "Compliance Training 2025" and "Compliance Training 2026" cluttering your library. You manually retire the old one, export historical data to spreadsheets, re-enroll everyone in the new version. Repeat annually.

Neither option gives you what compliance actually requires: a clear, accessible record of exactly what training looked like at any point in time.

A Different Architecture

REACHUM handles this differently because it was built cloud-native rather than retrofitted from the SCORM era.

The versioning workflow: duplicate your lesson, make your updates, and organize versions within a folder structure. The old version remains untouched with all its learner data intact. The new version starts fresh. No file exports. No upload cycles. No risk of corrupting in-progress completions.

The folder becomes your version timeline. When legal asks what Slide 5 contained last June, you open the folder, click that version, and show them. Seconds, not hours of digging through archived ZIPs.

The Practical Setup

A naming convention makes this seamless: Keep one lesson named [MASTER] Employee Handbook (or whatever the topic). This is what your share links and QR codes point to.

When content changes, copy it first. Name the copy with a version identifier—something like "v2025.06 - June Update"—and move it into a history folder. Then update the Master.

Your distribution links never change. Employees always get current content. And your compliance folder maintains the complete audit trail.

Why This Matters

Version control isn't a feature checkbox. It's your legal shield.

The difference between "we trained them" and "here's exactly what we trained them on, with completion records attached" is the difference between defensible compliance and exposure.

Traditional SCORM systems were designed when courses were burned to CDs. The architecture assumes static content. But compliance training isn't static—regulations change, policies evolve, and your records need to evolve with them without losing history.

That's the version control problem nobody talks about. Until the audit.