Prevent Low Tech Hacking with On Site Shredding
Posted: Wednesday, November 05, 2008
by Steven Hastert
Shred Nations
Every business generates and must maintain sensitive information. It can be trade secrets like research and development, customer lists, vendor lists or accounting records. It is also sensitive personal information about your employees and if you offer credit, your customers. Both types of sensitive information is being actively targeted as you read this; trade secrets by your competitors and the personal information by identity thieves.
It is time to evaluate your defenses for a low tech hacker. Look around your office; do you keep sensitive information sitting on your desk overnight? Are all of your file cabinets kept locked? How about your documents waiting to be shredded? Are they in a recycle bin or worse, put in the trash? Most offices throw a treasure trove of information out every night. Once in the dumpster this is considered public property by the Supreme Court.
Putting personal information in the trash is against the law for businesses under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACTA). In the attorney general has made throwing private information in the trash his crusade and fined companies millions of dollars for the practice. Ex-employees and groups with political agendas also dig through the trash in an effort to discredit the business.
An easy solution to help protect your business from all the various dumpster divers is with an on site shredding service (also called mobile shredding). As the name implies an industrial shredder is brought to your site for shredding. The business owner can witness the whole destruction process.
Worried that your shredding will take them all day? Don't. These shredders are built into trucks and shred 5,000 to 7,000 pounds an hour. That is over 150 file boxes of material turned to bits. If you measured the size of opening it would be 17,500 sheets at one time. The service will then handle the recycling of the paper shreds.
On site shredding services also provide you with locked containers to collect the documents. They come by on a regular schedule and your sensitive documents are now secure before the shredding. You are left with nothing but proof the shredding was properly done.
The best part is the cost of using a service is less than what it would cost in employee wages alone. Your employees can focus on growing your business and not wasting time un-jamming the shredder again.
On site shredding
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)This was obviously written for profit, I guess it would be useful if I had pounds of paper that needed shredding.You must not get any junk mail.
Makes me re-think some of our security plans.
It is amazing how many people still leave employee files in unlocked file cabinets.
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