You are looking into hiring a shredding company to handle the destruction of your company’s papers, but you’re looking to keep the price down without sacrificing quality and security. With a slumping economy these days, everyone is looking to stretch their dollar. Here are some tips on how to save money on your document shredding services.
It is cheaper to outsource your paper shredding instead of doing it in house at the shredding service, regardless of whether you choose in house our off site shredding. Off site shredding saves you money and time. The huge, industrial document shredders can destroy a huge amount of documents in just minutes. Also, when you consider outsourcing your shredding, you don’t have to take the cost of equipment into consideration. There is no cost to you since all the work is done for you at a secure shredding location. By hiring a shredding service to take care of your document shredding needs, you free up square footage to be used in ways other than storage. No more paying rent on square footage to store unneeded documents!
Another consideration when keeping the cost of your document shredding down is the location of the boxes with the papers to be shredded. If they are easy to access and load onto the shredding truck, there likely won’t be additional charges. However, if box after box has to be hauled either up or down or down flights of stairs, it is likely that there will be additional charges. It is important to note that fasteners such as paper clips, binder clips and paper clips can go through an industrial shredder. The one exception to this are three-ring binders. These must be removed before they go through the shredder. Some shredding companies can offer this removal service for an additional cost. You will have to take into consideration whether this additional fee would be worth paying, versus paying an employee to do it, instead.
Time Magazine had an article this week about the threat of electronic data destruction. The amount of data we all store is increasing geometrically. It is on your computer, tablet, and smart phone. Many of it has little value to anyone but you but there is also personal information that you need to keep secure.
So what is the best way to handle your electronics when it is time to upgrade to the latest and greatest. The most basic is to re-format the drive. This may be easy but it provides very little security since the data is still on the drive. With very basic software it is easily retrieved.
Some people choose to use software that overwrites all the data on the drive. This is effective but it requires you to purchase software and then takes a long time to run the program. The problem is magnified if you are looking at what it would take to wipe all the drives for a company when they upgrade equipment.
Physical destruction is another popular option. The drives are ground down into bits to prevent them from every being used again. For the home it can be done with a hammer. For a business then you probably will want to use a hard drive shredding service. Make sure you are using someone who is recycling the components in accordance with hazardous material requirements.
Then remember to destroy all the information on your portable devices. Smartphones may be a treasure trove of personal information. Before you sell your device make sure there is no information that can be retrieved.
Document shredding is an established protocol most businesses have with regards to disposing sensitive data and confidential information. Therefore, the next decisions remains: Who should perform the shredding?
While most companies are conservative about sharing their documents with a third-party solution provider, there are also benefits towards outsourced shredding services. As such, the decision whether to have this done in-house is definitely an important business decision that requires proper evaluation of the pros and the cons.
However, even before that, the following factors must be considered before making the call:
The volume of documents needed to be shred daily, weekly or monthly
The confidentiality of the documents that are subject for disposal
The number of employees needed to carry out the task, as well as the number of hours they’ll spend for the task and the time lost on profit-generating business activities
In House Shredding
Small companies typically employ a do-it-yourself approach in discarding documents.
Companies using this strategy enjoy the following benefits:
The costs for the work can be hidden in employee wages.
The processing time is quicker because it can be executed anytime.
However, the following disadvantages have been foreseen:
This tedious task is non-profit generating. As such, it defocuses employees from prioritizing core business tasks on a day-to-day basis.
They may let it build up and then try to hide it in the trash.
There is no real assurance that all sensitive information is destroyed by the employee-in-charge.
The completion of task does not earn the company an official certification that regulators often require.
Outsourced Shredding
Most established companies, on the other hand, which handle high volumes of sensitive information, hire shredding service providers.
A company’s incentives from hiring outsourced shredding partners include the following:
It allows companies to free up their internal resources.
It has better regulatory compliance because of its more rigid and highly certified shredding processes.
It reduces security risks because only selected professionals are given access to shredding the documents.
Dan Dolev, an analyst at Jefferies, has issued a report on Cintas. He called the company a buy based on their uniform service business but brought up the idea that the company could divest itself of the document shredding business. It is not known if this was arrived at by some contact with Cintas management.
With the failed sale of Recall earlier this year it is unlikely there is anyone in the market who would be willing to pay a premium for the business but I am not the expert. It would seem to go against their current trend of acquiring new companies.
“Cyber-crooks stole $1.2 million from a plumbing supply company, planting malware on company computers to initiate 43 bank transfers within 30 minutes.”
“Malicious software siphoned more than $700,000 from a public school bank account in 2 days when 74 separate transactions were used to transfer funds.”
“A small business owner was flooded with calls from job seekers but the company wasn’t hiring. A global identity-theft scheme had used stolen corporate information and bank fraud to steal people’s money and personal data.”
These business horror stories and more like them flood the airwaves daily as identity theft rises and new laws are enacted to protect businesses from financial loss.
A Typical Week of Business Documents
How many contracts, agreements, proposals, marketing statistics, invoices, purchasing orders and receipts does your business generate in a day or a week? Are you shredding these documents according to federal laws and applicable state laws? You may not be aware that recent United States legislation mandates the complete destruction of all important business documents. Violations of these laws can mean stiff fines and penalties.
And documents are not the only items that require shredding. CDs, tapes and computer discs also qualify.
Which documents must be shredded?
Since credit card fraud captures the most identity theft activity, how about credit card solicitations received by mail? Read carefully and you may notice identifying details on that piece of “junk”. Credit card companies buy lists from credit reporting agencies in order to send these solicitations, so they already know some important facts about you or your business.
How about your bank statements and even ATM receipts? Shred them all without hesitation for the best protection. What identity thieves want most are the personal details like name, address, social security number and driver’s license details. These thieves will go to any lengths to get what they want…even diving the dumpsters of large businesses to find old employee files and other documents containing sensitive information. For this reason, many companies hire professional document shredding services like Shred Nations to thoroughly destroy official, financial, legal and sensitive documents, CDs, tapes and discs.
Shred Nations will come to your business location and destroy your materials on-site, using specially equipped trucks that make quick work of thousands of pounds of paper. A Certificate of Destruction will be provided for your records, and all shredded materials are recycled, a process that includes pulping shredded material for use in new paper products.
While doing some research on Lifeline a Scripps Howard News reported discovered a massive hole in their record security. Lifeline is a federally funded program that provides discounted telephone service to low income people. A simple Google search into the program revealed a database of 170,000 users across 26 states.
The information on the users not only included names and addresses but also social security numbers and financial records. The records were not secured by any password and available to any internet user for download.
The reporter notified the companies of the problem so the threat if identity theft could be eliminated. You might think that the company would thank him. No, they responded with a letter by a lawyer threatening a law suit. They called the reporters “Scripps hackers.” The good news is that they did correct the problem.
The Indiana Attorney General is investigating the data breach. If found guilty of violating FACTA protections the company could be fined $1.5 million.
It is foolish to fight with a reporter over your error. They have a very big microphone to tell everyone what is happening. I hope it doesn’t end up like Andrew Auernheimer who was sentenced to 41 months in prison for exposing a data breach at AT&T.
A man contracted by the Canada Post to deliver mail has been arrested for stealing mail instead of doing his job. It seems he was just dumping the mail instead of delivering it. They are unsure if he went through the mail for any valuable before leaving it in a dumpster.
Mail is a weak link that identity thieves like to target. Here are some simple steps to eliminate some of the threat.
Make sure you are getting your mail in a locked box.
If you are expecting something important then make sure it arrives.
Don’t let the mail pile up in your mailbox. If you are on vacation have it held at the post office.
Send all mail out through a locked mail box.
Shred all the mail that you don’t need to save.
Some simple steps go a long way to preventing the threat from your mail. The good news is that much of the important information is now coming electronically to prevent human error.
Commercial document shredding is a wise investment for every business, whether dropping off a few sensitive documents to an authorized collections center or scheduling regular pickups over time.
Why not simply purchase a commercial paper shredder for office use? Because this may not be sufficient to guarantee that sensitive information will remain secure until it is rendered completely undecipherable, as required by laws such as FACTA, HIPAA and GLBA. Is it really a good use of time and money to pay an employee to stand at the shredder and monitor the destruction of every single shredded document? As well, employees, unlike machines, grow tired and distracted. In frustration and with a lack of understanding for the importance of the task, employees may discard sensitive information in the trash.
Why risk it when professional shredding trucks can shred thousands of documents in an hour? Commercial document shredding services offer quick, painless processing and the highest security, complete with a Certificate of Destruction confirming your confidential information was properly destroyed prior to recycling.
For Small Businesses with Low Volume
As the Internet has grown bigger, “small business” has gotten smaller. According to research firm IDC, the number of United States home-based businesses will stand at more than 20 million by 2013. Just imagine all the documents 20 million home businesses will generate, not to mention millions of commercial small businesses.
Regardless of size, the value of secure document shredding remains the same. If your business produces low volume, a commercial shredding service like Shred Nations will direct you to an authorized collection center, where you can drop off your documents for shredding and remain in compliance with state and federal laws.
For slightly higher volume businesses, Shred Nations will provide locking storage bins for total security of your documents prior to shredding. At a designated time, the bins are collected and transported to a warehouse where shredding takes place as you monitor the process on closed circuit TV.
For high or ongoing volume, Shred Nations will send a specially equipped truck to shred your documents on-site while you monitor the process.
In each scenario, you will receive a Certificate of Destruction detailing date and time of your document destruction.
Don’t play games with document security. Get secure document shredding for your business.
Canon Business Process Services have released a survey of executives concerning their organization’s records management program. The survey was of 222 C-level employees at large organizations. Industries represented include financial service, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and technology. All respondents were from organizations with annual revenue over $100 million.
The most interesting result was that only 15% of the organizations had done a risk assessment on the record retention policy at the company. It is unclear how the length of their retention periods was determined. Every company needs to develop a record retention policy that outlines how long records should be maintained for legal and business reasons. This is determined by federal laws, state laws, and industry requirements.
A record retention policy will also outline who has access to what type of documents. It will also set security standards for how the records are stored. Finally, a good retention policy will then spell out how the documents are destroyed. This may be done by on-site shredding or off-site shredding depending on the type of document and the potential risk if not secured.
After the standards are issued to all employees then the work is not done. There should be ongoing audits of the company to ensure that the retention of periods are still valid. Laws covering document retention continue to evolve on the state and federal level. According to this survey the followup is not happening.
Here is an interview of a Cincinnati woman who used dumpster diving to get the information she needed to commit identity theft. She says a good target was people who make auto loans. The information would then be used to print fake identification and fake checks. The scam was good enough for a$500-$2,000 a day.
The only way to protect yourself from this type of fraud is to prevent your information from being left in a form that can be read. Shred all that private information and remember to get your mail in a locked box. These small time identity thieves are roaming neighborhoods and don’t mind going around some coffee grounds to get your information.
