Shred on Site

Every company has secure documentation – anything from staff payment information, to accounts or private customer data. When you’ve finished with these printed documents, under UK confidentiality laws, your company is required to dispose of these securely. And not only for paper documents – don’t forget any of your data that is stored on hard drives, USB sticks or other media.

How big is the risk without shredding?

Disposing of data in a non-secure way leaves it open to the risk of unauthorised access. Even shredding your own data, when not done sufficiently, you can be at a high risk for a security breach. If this happens, then you will lose your reputation as well as customers. On average, 1 in every 5 security breaches has a significant impact on businesses. Long lasting damage can be caused to your organisation’s reputation if you do not take precautions to protect secure customer data.

It’s not just your customers you’re accountable to

As well as affecting those whose data is exposed, there are legal implications for not protecting confidential information adequately. Failure to comply with UK legal standards will lead to harsh consequences such as fines, or in extreme cases it can be seen as a criminal offence. This can damage your company name for a long time, and cause ongoing issues for maintaining customer trust.

Disposing of non-paper media

Disposing of all media that is not paper can be tricky. Because it is more difficult, it is unlikely that most companies have the facilities in-house to complete this destruction. Failure to do this can result in penalties and damage to your reputation. Allowing a specialist shredding company such as Shred-on-Site to do this for you will guarantee complete destruction through their fully EN 15713:2009 compliant and accredited service. In fact, you can watch the whole destruction process, and we’ll even present you with a certificate of destruction.

What is secure shredding?

Content that is not shredded properly can be pieced back together. Doing this yourself, or getting employees to take responsibility for it can leave your documents insufficiently destroyed, as well as employees not being sure what counts as confidential and must be shredded. With 41% of security breaches being caused directly by human error, this isn’t a mistake you’ll want to make.

Companies like Shred-on-Site offer businesses a quick and easy way to ensure that their confidential data is shredded to a high level, whilst still on the site of the business. One-off or regular collections can be made, and chosen to fit the requirements of each organisation.

How you store your documents is important

Before destruction, there is also a risk of information being disclosed accidentally. Keeping a pile or even a bag full of confidential information makes it easily accessible and allows a lot of damage to be done if it gets into the wrong hands. Shred-on-Site also provides a number of secure solutions such as locked veneered capsules, which can hold your documents until they arrive to destroy and remove them.

For more information, give Shred-on-Site a call on 0800 181 4106.

Author: Mark Coombes - Follow me on Google+