Why Experts Recommend Shredding

Organizations and homes are under attack for their valuable information. They produce documents in their daily business practices. Private information is also delivered by mail and electronically. People who want your information include:

• Criminals who commit crimes like identity theft, credit card fraud, and check fraud.
• Competitors seeking to gain trade secrets like customer lists, marketing plans, and financial information.
• Investigators who seek to sensationalize, expose, and embarrass organizations.
• Disgruntled employees are opportunists who seek to destroy the foundations of the businesses success.

Protect Your Organization

Shredding documents and destroying electronic media effectively removes the pool of information from being accessed by anyone. It protects the organization and innocent third parties both known and unknown.

• Known losses are the gradual loss from embezzlement, identity theft, and fraud.
• Unknown losses are when the information is exploited by competitors and disgruntled employees to exploit competitive advantages.

Its the Law

Beginning with the 1974 Federal Privacy Act, the number of laws requiring businesses to protect personal information has exploded. A catalyst to the proliferation of laws was the 1988 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in California vs Greenwood that affirmed the right to "dumpster dive." This ruling made it a necessity for every individual and business to shred their paper.

Now laws like HIPAA and FACTA have further defined the need to shred. The federal laws along with a score of state ones require all private information from employees and customers to be destroyed prior to disposal.

Shredding Services Save Money

Shredding is an easy, straight-forward, and low cost method for destroying information. It reduces records storage and handling costs. When a professional shredding service is involved, the shredded paper is reduced to pulp and recycled.

Shredding costs a few cents a pound and compared to all the costs associated with data breaches it is cheap insurance. A shredding service will also help eliminate the costs of transporting boxes from storage to the truck. Security containers are free to keep at your office when you shred routinely.

Shredding is Easy

By using a shredding service you save employees time. They can focus on their jobs instead of the growing pile of shredding. The problem is even more acute when professionals waste their time doing the work of a clerk. Having a secure bin and routine service makes the elimination of important information routine.