There are individuals out there that do nothing but try to steal information about your company, clients, and employees to make money. Ponemon Institute’s “2017 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Overview,” estimates that the odds of your company having a data breach are as high as 1 in 4. If your company doesn’t have secure shredding procedures in place, then you’re at a greater risk of being compromised.
The risk never goes away, so maintaining strict data destruction measures is essential. All kinds of documents are thrown away during a regular business day. As much as 50 percent of those documents have information on them that is protected by privacy laws. What’s even more amazing is that 40 percent of the documents created in your office every day get thrown away that very same day.
Is your firm guilty of throwing any of these papers into the regular wastebaskets? These documents can fall into a number of categories such as proposals, letters, applications, bids, receipts, invoices, customer lists, personnel records, medical records, payroll reports, voided checks, and bank statements. You’re putting a lot at risk if you’re throwing any of these into the regular trash.
The answer is having a “Shred All Policy” in place. All of your paper documents will be shredded without exception. Here’s how:
Hire a Professional Shredding Service
In business, you’ll need one of two options concerning document destruction, one–time or scheduled shredding services.
One-time shredding is for those businesses and organizations that don’t use a lot of paper and therefore don’t need shredding that often. Regardless of the frequency, you still need to dispose of all paper files in the most secure way possible, and that means shredding.
Scheduled shredding makes a “Shred All Policy” very easy. The document destruction company will supply you with locking containers that you’ll keep in your office. Your staff will now dispose of all paper documents of any kind in the locking containers from that day forward. You’ll no longer be putting documents into the regular trash receptacles where anyone could have access to them. That includes other employees, office visitors, cleaning staff, and an untold amount of people once the trash is removed from your office. The shredding company will come to your place of business on a regular schedule to empty and destroy your papers.
Training Your Staff
Hiring professionals is the right way to go, but if you don’t train your staff to change their bad habits the likely hood of a data breach becomes a certainty. Put your “Shred All Policy” in writing. Then have your employees read it, review it with them, keep a copy, sign it, and then review it at least once annually to keep it fresh in their minds and stress the importance of following it.
Recycling is NOT Secure Shredding
Don’t be fooled into a false sense of security with recycling. Although all the paper document destruction companies destroy get recycled, none of the paper a recycler takes is securely destroyed. A recycler is focused on separating the documents into similar types of paper so they can get the most money for the paper. That’s their business, and it puts your information at risk. Shredding companies shred first and recycle second.
Currently Using a Shredding Service? Don’t Wait to Start!
FileShred is a local document shredding company that services the document destruction needs of residents and businesses in Connecticut and the Springfield Massachusetts area. Need help with securely destroying confidential records? Give us a call today or request a quote online to see how you can better protect your information and your business.
