Why In-House Shredding Doesn’t Cut It
By now, all business owners and managers know that personal information must be securely destroyed when it is discarded. Unfortunately, many of them fail to appreciate the regulatory requirement to demonstrate that information destruction is being performed consistently and systematically.
For example, many organizations buy a shredder. Employees are then instructed to use the shredder to destroy anything that is confidential. Theoretically, those employees are expected to accumulate the confidential documents at their workstations, then take the time to shred them during a break or at the end of the day.
But theory isn’t reality.
Shredders often breakdown, office cleaners throw out random stacks of paper, and since shredding isn’t all that much fun for super busy employees, many are not diligent about the process. In the end, the office shredders actually do more damage than good since they give management a false sense of security that the information is being destroyed.
But, even if all that weren’t true, even if those shredders were being used religiously, there’s another problem. Office shredders provide no audit trail showing a consistent, ongoing, systematic destruction process.
Everyone knows that data protection regulations are getting stronger. And, while stiffer fines, class action lawsuits, and expensive data breach notifications are the tip of that spear, one of the lesser-known requirements is that organizations must now be able to demonstrate their ongoing compliance. Even though an organization may be doing the right thing, they are found to be non-compliant in the event they cannot show clear evidence to regulators that they are.
Pointing to a small shredder in the supply room is not much use for establishing a record of ongoing, secure information destruction.
The Solution is Shred America!
Of the tens of thousands of clients Shred America serves, every one of them tried using an office shredder at some point. They discovered, like you will, that we are more efficient, more convenient, and more secure than in-house shredding. They learned that employees happily complied when it was so easy. And, equally important, they obtained the demonstrable record of a compliant, ongoing, secure information destruction process that regulators now require.
Contact Shred America today to learn more about how our cost-effective, convenient, compliant document and electronic media destruction services can help your organization.
