6 Reasons Why You Need a Certified Document Shredding Service
Even as businesses try to transition to a paperless workplace, the fact is that most offices produce a surprisingly large amount of paper documents. All business information and data has a natural lifecycle that spans from its creation to its destruction. Within the course of an information lifecycle, the data can take many forms – but it typically begins as a hard copy record.
Most of the time, these documents will contain confidential information, and the responsibility of maintaining that confidentiality rests within the company, that’s why it’s important to secure the services of a document and data destruction vendor. Storing copious amounts of hard copies leaves your business vulnerable to data breaches, identity theft, and even corporate espionage.
If your company has documents that contain the following information, you should consider secure shredding to ensure data security and compliance.
Income/expense records
Tax information
Training information
Confidential employee or client information
Sensitive company innovative ideas
Name
Social Security number
Driver’s license number
Credit card number
Diagnosis/Treatment information
Professional shredding services offer organizations a valuable service that saves time, money and ensures compliance. If you’ve been putting off finding a trustworthy company to handle your document destruction, here are some reasons you might want to reconsider your approach and contact RIM:
Cost savings.
The cost of hiring a professional shredding company saves you the expense of purchasing, maintaining, and repairing your own shredder. Additionally, their industrial shredders can do the job faster, more efficiently, and on-site, which is more cost-effective than paying an employee to do the work. Finally, digitizing and shredding documents frees up space you might otherwise have allocated to storing hard copy records.
Increased Security.
A shredding company can handle sensitive information that you’d prefer your competitors and employees not see, such as co-workers’ salaries, confidential personnel and financial files, health insurance records, business and marketing plans, and more. These documents typically contain sensitive information, shredding them in a timely fashion ensures they don’t end up forgotten or taken into the wrong hands. Office security isn’t a matter of trust. Most business owners and managers trust their employees to be careful with documents and maintain confidential information, however, no matter how much you trust your employees, it’s surprisingly easy to leave your company exposed to a data breach by simply leaving a document in a printer—or even on a desk—resulting it in documents going missing.
Small Offices Still Need Shredding.
No matter the size of your office or organization may be, the documents you produce can be a potential security risk. For new companies, the volume of documents may be quite small; however, a single mistake with customer information can destroy your reputation. By engaging a reputable shredding service, you’ll make sure that confidential documents don’t go missing. This also Improves productivity at the workplace.
Taking employees away from their regular tasks to shred documents in-house reduces their productivity and uses up time that could be spent on higher value tasks. When a document shredding company handles the job for you, your employees can perform tasks that add to your bottom line.
4. Reduced Liability.
If you task an employee with the job of shredding and they are injured in the process, you will be liable for that injury, time lost on the job, and workmen’s compensation.
5. Environmental Responsibility Matters.
While it’s true that much of the paper shredded in a home machine ends up in a landfill or garbage site, reputable document destruction vendors are committed to sustainable recycling efforts. When these companies shred documents, the paper doesn’t end up in a landfill. Instead, these vendors send the tiny shreds of paper to a recycling facility, where they are able to be recycled into new paper products. In the process, any traces of information left on those fragments are destroyed, making the process even more secure.
6. It is Quick & Efficient.
Unlike in-office shredding, which requires an employee to gather documents and spend time feeding them into a shredding machine, using a document destruction vendor takes almost no time away from your business. With onsite collection containers and mobile shredding trucks, you simply place documents in the bin and a trained technician will move to the truck where all contents are shredded. Even if the work is done off-site, your required time is next to nothing.
Finding a trustworthy data and document destruction company in Africa isn’t difficult. Simply contact RIM, and we’ll help you with all of your information destruction needs, along with any other IT asset disposition needs you may have.