One man’s trash is another man’s treasure? That’s a saying that rings true when you don’t properly dispose documents containing confidential data or personal information. Data breaches aren’t just found online, they can be found in your everyday confidential documents. This shows that the disposal of hard-copied documents containing sensitive information must be exercised with the utmost caution
One of the most commonly-used methods to dispose outdated confidential documents is by shredding as it is fast, safe and cost-effective. Shredding confidential data and sensitive corporate information is just as important as having an internet firewall for security.
While organizations can take on the task in-house, more and more are turning to certified shredding companies to do the task for them. Professional shredding companies offer organizations a valuable service that saves time, money and ensures compliance. Here’s why your company needs a shredding service.
6 Reasons why your business needs a secure shredding service
1. Protect Company Intellectual Properties
For any organizations, Intellectual Properties (IP) are intangible assets. But when it is not managed and disposed properly, it could potentially become a liability which will lead to legal implications and criminal breaches.
One of the most common violations of intellectual properties is counterfeiting of copyrights or trademarks. It is estimated that hundreds of billions of revenue are lost as a result of counterfeiting. This shows that intellectual property rights play a key role in our global economy and it allows companies to strengthen their position in the market. Counterfeited products will not only deprive the value and reputation of the company but also introduce substandard, unsafe defects into the products thereby putting consumers at risk.
Your company will most likely have information that could pose a risk of counterfeiting if it was found by a competitor or the public. It is important to protect your company’s intellectual property found on documents or other media by making sure that it is properly destructed.
2. Save Cost and Storage Space
Hiring a professional shredding company will save you the expense of purchasing, maintaining, and repairing your own shredder. Shredding equipment needs to be taken apart and cleaned on a regular basis to ensure efficient performance.
Moreover, the records storage fees for those documents could take a chunk out of your monthly budget. By shredding outdated and unwanted documents, not only you can reduce operational costs, but it will also free up space you might otherwise have allocated to storing those documents.
3. Increase Security
A professional shredding company can handle sensitive information that you’d prefer your competitors and employees not to see, such as co-workers’ salaries, confidential personnel and financial files, health insurance records, business and marketing plans, and more.
The documents will also be transported in a bonded container or truck and destructed in a facility equipped with security systems. You will also be provided a certificate of destruction, giving you confidence that your data has been securely destructed.
4. Increase productivity
Taking employees away from their regular tasks to shred documents in-house reduces their productivity and uses up time that could be spent on value-added tasks. Professional shredding companies have industrial shredders that can do the job faster, more efficiently, and on-site. Engaging shredding services will help your organization operate at peak efficiency while safeguarding your company’s records and documents against malicious intent.
5. Ensure Legal Compliance and reduce liability
The rising trend in data breaches continues to angle upwards, and as a result, there has never been a more precarious time in history for businesses to keep copious amounts of paper documents. One of the major damages a data breach can cause is identity theft, which is when any personally identifiable information is being used by malicious criminals to commit all types of fraudulent activities.
Companies are obliged to protect customers’ and employees’ personal information in their possession or under their control. Failure to comply with the guidelines, companies could face serious ramifications such as adverse media coverage, brand damage, loss of revenue, regulatory fines, and unforeseen internal running costs.
By hiring a shredding service provider that understands and fully complies with government guidelines, the final output is ensured to fulfill both clients’ needs & industry standards, giving you peace of mind that you are compliant with these rules.
6. Reducing carbon footprint
Paper is one of the major causes of environmental pollution when disposed of incorrectly. If your business stores its information in paper documents, you should make sure that unnecessary paper documents are disposed of in an environmentally appropriate way.
Shredding is one way of ensuring this. However, it is not enough to shred the unnecessary documents and dispose of them in the trash. Outsourcing to a shredding company that deals with eco-friendly, confidential waste disposal can support your organization’s sustainability agenda by recycling the shredded paper instead of ending up in the landfill.
Paper documents aren’t going anywhere, so it’s important to establish secure shredding best practices. Crown Records Management provides compliant and secure shredding and disposal solutions that will save your organization time, money and risk. Contact us today, we’re here for all your paper shredding needs.
