Why Every Business Needs a Document Shredding Program

Why Every Business Needs a Document Shredding Program

Why Every Business Needs a Document Shredding Program

Document destruction should be part of every business’s normal operating procedures. The information you use every day has to be protected from unauthorized access. That includes your paper business records. You may think that the likelihood of someone coming into your office and stealing some of your documents is small. Although documents need to be secured in your office with locks on file room doors and file cabinets, that’s not where your biggest concern is. The trash should be.

If you or your employees are just throwing away documents along with the normal daily garbage you are exposing your business, your clients, and your employees to a possible information breach. Dumpster diving has been, and continues to be, a real threat. That’s not to mention how many people have access to your trash with the normal processing of garbage. Privacy laws also require that any document that has protected information on it needs to be destroyed so the information is not readable or cannot be reconstructed, that means shredding.

To make sure confidential information stays confidential, you need to implement a company-wide shredding policy.

Here are some key aspects of a document shredding policy;

1. Shred Everything

The most critical component of your policy is a “Shred All” requirement. Don’t expose yourself to the possibility of someone making a mistake by putting a piece of paper into the trash that should be shredded. With a “shred every paper document” policy you eliminate this possibility. The easiest way to do this is to hire a professional document destruction company. They’ll provide security containers that will be placed in convenient locations in your office. Then your staff just puts all paper documents into the containers instead of waste baskets.

2. Shred Consistently

Documents should never sit in containers for an undetermined amount of time. Also, your staff should know the shredding schedule. The’ll be more likely to follow the policy if they know when shredding is happening.

3. Train Your Staff

The best shredding policy isn’t going to be successful unless you train your employees. Your shredding program should be put into a document that your employees should read and sign an acknowledgement.

4. Identify Risks

Conduct regular document security assessments to evaluate potential risks and vulnerabilities around the office.  Take the necessary action to reduce those risks.

5.  Review Your Program Annually

Review your shredding program at least annually. Update the plan where needed and alert your staff to any changes.

6. Recycling is Not Secure

Recycling is good for the environment, but not good for protecting your information. When you put papers into the recycling bin, you never know what happens to your private documents. Recyclers look to get the greatest value for the paper so they will separate it into the different types. That means your documents will be handled many times by many people without ever being destroyed until they are eventually sent to a paper mill.

7. Hire a Professional

Outsourcing document destruction to a professional shredding company is the easiest and quickest way to implement an effective information destruction program. They’ll be able to assess your needs and make recommendations. They should also be able to provide you with sample-written document shredding programs that you can start with to create your own information shredding policy.

Letting a shredding service handle the destruction of your business records frees up your staff to concentrate on what’s important for your company. Like growing your business and assisting your clients.

Outsourcing your document shredding ensures that all documents remain secure and protected in security containers in your office that are designed to store your business records until they are securely shredded by the experts.

FileShred is a locally owned document shredding service that will help you implement the best document destruction program for your company. Give us a call or visit our website at www.fileshred.net.