How to Choose the Best Shredding Option For Your Business

Secure document shredding is imperative to keeping your information safe, even after the end of its useful life. Securely destroying confidential information reduces your liability and protects proprietary consumer or company info. Learn more to choose the best shredding option for your organization.

Professional Document Shredding vs. DIY Shredding

Professional document shredding establishes a chain of custody and provides certificates of destruction, including which documents were shredded and when. This ensures that documents are not skipped over or misplaced. 

Standard office shredders have limited capacity costing businesses more time and energy than outsourced solutions. 

By allowing Augusta Data Storage to manage your shredding needs, your organization will be able to spend time and money on more productive tasks. Our mobile shredding units or shred plant destroys in minutes what could take hours with an office shredder. 

How Often Do We Need Shredding?

Depending on the number of records your organization accumulates, there are options for scheduled and drop-off shredding services. For all of our secure shredding options, look here. 

Industry Requirements

The Federal Trade Commission has standards for the proper disposal of information. These regulations are created to protect the privacy of consumer information and reduce the risk of fraud. You can read more information on these regulations here. For regulations related to HIPAA, read here. 

Secure Shredding Options

Mobile / On-Site Shredding

Augusta Data Storage’s mobile shredding unit eliminates any doubt about the security of your documents before shredding. Our shred truck will be on-site at your facility to easily shred your documents. Organizations in fields such as banking, law firms, hospitals, and government agencies often opt for on-site shredding to maintain a tight chain of custody and ensure that unshredded documents are not leaving their property.

Mobile shredding offers many benefits including secure collection bins for storage between scheduled shredding services, the ability to add documents to be shredded at any time, time and money savings, and peace of mind knowing your material is irrecoverable, eliminating any privacy concerns. 

Plant-based / Off-Site Shredding

With plant-based, off-site shredding, documents are picked up and delivered to the Augusta Data Storage facility to be shredded. Our document shredding plant is equipped with industry-leading shred technology that allows us to shred 10,000 lbs of documents per hour. The benefits of choosing plant-based shredding services include pickup and transfer services, ideal for large-scale bulk shredding or record purge projects. We offer secure collection and transport, and you have the option to witness the shredding process for additional reassurance. 

Our off-site shredding services include:

• Pickup of material from your facility or office
• Destruction of material through shredding
• Recycling of all shredded material
• Certified weight ticket and list of material destroyed
• Certificate of Destruction
• Destruction witnessing

Drop-Off Shredding

Drop-off shredding options are ideal for businesses and local residents that need one-time, small batch shredding services. Augusta Data Storage offers drop off shredding options and items are treated with the same level of care and security as our scheduled and purge shredding services. Drop-off services are billed by the pound and subject to a minimum service charge. 

Purges

Purging, or bulk shredding, provides a way to eliminate large amounts of out of date or unused records. At completion of your purge job, Augusta Data Storage provides you with a certificate of destruction as a record of compliance. 

Purge Shredding Services are Ideal for:

• Document shredding prior to relocating
• Yearly cleanouts
• Finalizing of an audit or litigation
• Corporate consolidation
• Shredding of sensitive documents for compliance reasons

ANNUAL PURGES

For many businesses, an annual or semi-annual records purge is scheduled as a part of their records retention schedule. Once files reach the end of their useful life, they are moved out of rotation and scheduled for secure destruction. If your business does not generate enough secure information to use our scheduled shredding services, annual or semi-annual purges are the perfect option.

ONE-TIME PURGES

For organizations that do not have a steady influx of records, one-time purges require no long-term commitment and offer access to the same level of security and industry best practices that our regularly scheduled shredding customers receive. One-time purge projects are ideal ahead of office relocations or business closures and provide peace of mind for secure destruction of your remaining documents. 

For over 25 years, Augusta Data Storage has been a leading, local provider of secure records management services in the Augusta, GA area. Our services offer restricted access entry and facility monitoring, NARA and NAID compliant solutions, and background checked personnel. Augusta Data Storage maintains NAID-AAA Certification for both mobile and plant-based document destruction, as well as mobile and plant-based hard drive destruction services. For more information about our NAID-AAA Certification and learn more about NAID read here. 

For any additional questions concerning our services and processes, contact us today!