Whether it’s your clients, your patients, your businesses, or your own private data, making sure confidential information is protected is more critical than ever. Keeping unneeded paper records longer than needed increases the threat of having that private information stolen. Here are some reasons to consider hiring a document destruction service.
- THERE ARE PRIVACY LAWS YOUR MUST COMPLY WITH
Whenever you are discarding information on documents like medical records, payroll records or any papers with personal information such as addresses and account numbers you are legally required to dispose of them correctly to be compliant with all privacy laws. All of the documents should be shredded to ensure the data can never be seen again.
- PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION FROM GETTING INTO THE WRONG HANDS
Identity theft is growing every year don’t allow yourself to become a victim. These criminals will search through your garbage cans at the curb of dig through dumpsters to steal personal information. If these thieves find personal details they can use that information to set up phony credit accounts that will take years to correct. They may even be able to get access to your bank accounts and withdraw money.
- A PROFESSIONAL SHREDDING SERVICE SAVES YOU TIME
Using a small personal shredder will take a long time to destroy papers since you can only feed a few sheets at a time. You’ll also have to remove staples, paper clips and rubber bands. A Professional Shredding Service will destroy in minutes what would take you days or weeks to do on your own.
- SHREDDING IS ALSO RECYCLING
Protecting the environment is important and shredding helps. Companies increase goodwill by highlighting their efforts to be green. Some clients require you to show how your company is acting in an environmentally friendly way. A Shredding Company recycles all the documents they shred. That shredded paper goes through a process that turns in back into paper pulp so it can be used to make other paper products and reduce the need to harvest trees.
- PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS INFORMATION WITH DOCUMENT DESTRUCTION
90% of all businesses data is on documents. Everything from meeting minutes, client proposals, employee records, business plans to sales reports would give your competitors an advantage if they had access to them. Shredding all documents will prevent these important papers from being used by anyone to harm your firm.
- PROTECT YOUR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
If your company has spent time and money researching and developing a new product or service that work has to be protected. If a competitor was able to get your confidential ideas, future product or service plans they could beat you to the market. This could result a loss on your investment and affect your future financial growth.
- REDUCE SPACE FOR RECORD RETENTION
Having a record retention policy in place and shredding any documents that have reached their retention period will reduce your need to use space to store records. Holding onto files longer than necessary will require more office space or more offsite storage, which all costs more money you would not need to spend if you shred documents as soon as you can.
- STACKS OF PAPER ARE NOT SECURE
Having papers stacked around the office is not secure. Anyone coming into your office for any reason can take a piece of paper off of one of those stacks and depending on what information is on that document can use it to hurt your business or your client. If you don’t need it shred it instead of stacking it and deciding what to do with it later. A document destruction company will provide you with secure containers to safely store papers until they are shredded.
- YOUR CUSTOMERS TRUST YOU WITH THEIR PRIVATE INFORMATION
When a company has a document destruction program in place to shred confidential documents with their customer’s and clients’ information they protect the trust of their clients. By shredding files they are making sure they are not violating that trust.
- YOU MUST PROTECT EMPLOYEE INFORMATION
Employee information must be protected from outsiders but also must not become water cooler conversations. If any of that information was to get out to staff think of all of the animosity that could be created within the ranks. Keep all employee information under lock and key and shred any employee documents as soon as they are no longer needed.
These are just a few reasons you need a professional document shredding service like FileShred. Give us a call to see how we can help you protect your paper records.
