5 Ways In-House Shredding Can Cost You

There are many businesses throughout the Augusta area that use documents each day that should be shredded or destroyed at the end of their useful life. For many offices it is common to have an extra box or trashcan near the printer or in a central location in the office to collect items for shredding. After the recycling bin is filled, the office admin or a member of the maintenance staff shreds the papers with a small, desktop shredder and recycles the scraps. A solution that seems safe for your information and for the environment, but is it really?

In the event of a data breach within your organization, would you be protected by these processes? What is the actual cost of your internal employees maintaining these systems in-house, and is it all really worth the cost savings? Here are a few points to consider.

TIME

There are two parts to this time argument, the first is related to your employee(s) who maybe be managing the shredding process. How much time does it really take them to shred a recycling bin full of documents, 3 or 4 pages at a time? What does managing this process keep them from being able to get done otherwise?

Additionally, you want to consider how often you are shredding the documents. Are papers sitting in the bin for weeks, or is someone dedicating time at the end of each week to clear the bin before the weekend? Do you maintain a consistent shredding schedule? How can people know whether or not secure information they placed in the bin has been destroyed?

OPEN COLLECTION RECPTICLES

Speaking of frequency of shredding, let’s talk about your collection containers. It is not uncommon for offices to use old paper boxes or a blue recycling bin to collect loose papers for shredding. These containers are easy to drop your papers in, which means it’s just as easy to take them out. If your shred collection container is collecting private information like customer records, financial documents, or even employee records, if this information ended up in the wrong hands a breach could lead to identity theft, fraud, and an array of other issues, for which you would be held responsible.

LACK OF TRACKING

One of the biggest ways you can protect yourself from a breach is to do your due diligence. Part of this includes regular shredding of confidential records and information as well as tracking of destruction. It doesn’t do to simply shred your documents, you want to keep a detailed list of your destruction dates on record, adding to the list of responsibilities of the person managing your office shredding needs.

EMPLOYEE ERROR

It’s easy to say that your employees will act with caution and will track accordingly and expect that to be ok, but many of us make small mistakes each day, and when you’re dealing with secure information, you want to eliminate the potential for error as much as possible. In a study of 2016 breaches in health care data researchers found that the leading cause of breaches in the industry were a result of employee error or negligence. By putting systems in place to remove your employees from the destruction and tracking process, you are increasing your information security measures.

EQUIPMENT & PROCESS MAINTENANCE

There is additional cost associated with maintaining your shredding equipment and processes. Not only do you need to ensure that your shredding devices are operational, you also have to have systems in place to ensure that shredding is occurring regularly, which means someone will need to oversee and track the process, which adds additional time and cost to your internal operations.

While these costs or risks might seem minimal, they can quickly add up, and if your organization finds itself the victim of a security breach, the cost of outsourcing secure destruction to an experienced and certified local partner, like Augusta Data Storage, seem minimal.  Our fleet of shred trucks service businesses across Augusta, Evans, North Augusta, Aiken, Thompson and more and by partnering with us we can help you address all five of these safety concerns.

Our shredding service is NAID AAA Certified and we offer certificates of destruction after each shred service is complete. Additionally, we provide you with a secure, locked collection bin to place in your office until your scheduled service date and time. You can schedule shred pickups as frequently as you see fit and we even offer large scale purge shredding options, if you find that you need to bulk purge outdated records. Turning your office shredding over to a secure shredding partner allows you to build a more routine, secure process for protecting your business’ information.

Contact us today for more information to start a scheduled shredding service. 706.793.0186.