SHREDDING
Why Should I Shred?
It's The Law
Your organization must comply with laws and regulations requiring that you protect certain information when it is discarded. At the federal level, HIPAA (healthcare) and Gramm-Leach-Bliley (financial) require specific safeguards such as shredding to meet compliance. The Supreme Court ruled in California versus Greenwood (1988) that businesses and/or individuals do not have a broad right to privacy with respect to the items they throw in the trash. Consequently, business documents thrown in the trash are open invitations for the illegal use of personal or business information. If your organization is entrusted with confidential information from customers, you should take every precaution to protect the information, including shredding it before it is discarded.
What You Should Shred?
You may not have much confidential information that needs to be shredded? You may want to reconsider. Here is a list of the type of information that absolutely should be shredded.
- Account Documents
- Activity sheets
- Advertising
- Applications
- Appraisals
- ATM Receipts
- Bank statements
- Bids and quotes
- Bills
- Brokerage Statements
- Budgets
- Business plans
- Canceled checks
- Client lists
- Contact lists
- Corporate tax records
- Correspondence
- Credit Card Statements
- Credit Checks
- Credit Cards Offers
- Credit Cards Receipts
- Customer records
- Deposit Receipts
- Disciplinary reports and promotions
- Educational reports
- Expense reports
- Financial statements
- Forecasts
- Formulas, product plans and tests
- General service information
- Hard Drives
- Home Remodel Receipts
- Home Purchase Records
- Health and safety reports
- Internal reports
- IRA Contributions
- Insurance Policies – Expired
- Legal Documents
- Living Will
- Lottery tickets
- Magnetic media
- Maps and blueprints
- Marketing plans
- Medical records & X-rays
- Microfilm and microfiche
- Military Records
- Mobile Phones
- New product information
- Payroll documents
- Performance appraisals
- Personnel files
- Plastic credit and ID cards
- Real Estate Records
- Research and development reports
- Retirement Acct Statements
- Sales forecasts
- Specification drawings
- Strategic reports
- Strategies
- Supplier purchase orders
- Supplier reports
- Tax Records
Workplace Shredding Concerns
There are Several Reasons Why You Should Consider a Professional Shredding Service
A.) Office Shredding increases your company exposure and liability
If you should be challenged by an auditor or an attorney for non compliance, they claim that you do not have a regular, professional shredding practice. Once they determine that you are using an in-house shredding program, they claim that you do not adhere to a regular shredding schedule and that you can’t provide adequate documentation of what’s been shredded, when it’s been shredded and by whom. Therefore, once the question arises as to when and where specific information was destroyed, organizations without documentation are more susceptible to fines and increased exposure.
Ark-La-Tex Shredding Co., Inc., provides Certificates of Destruction relating to all materials shredded along with specific times, dates, etc.
B.) Using Office Shredders is More Expensive than using a Professional Shredding Company
Usually small businesses that operate an office shredder spend about 15 to 20 minutes of staff time each day shredding confidential information and documents. Once you consider the employee wage and benefits, interfaced with the cost of operating the shredder, the overall cost usually will exceed the cost of using a Professional Shredding Company.
C.) Destroyed Documents and Information Can Usually be Reassembled when using an Office Shredder
The manner in which most office shredders destroy information is referred to as the cross-cut or ribbon-cut method. Therefore, when these strips of paper are discarded or recycled, anyone can “dumpster dive” and reassemble these strips of paper. Your firm is giving easy access to not only your own corporate information, but that of your customers. There are several software programs that will now assist individuals to scan and reassemble this information.
