Ever since its invention in ancient China, paper has been a staple material for society, for everything from business to printing Bibles to today’s memos, posters, hand-written letters, legal documents, and much more. For a business hard at work today, paper is key to containing and conveying information, ranging from memos and budget reports to future plans for the company, and offices often buy paper wholesale from major retailers. But after a point, paper in the office becomes a liability in more ways than one. It might catch on fire, or documents could get misfiled and even lost in that mountain of paperwork. And that’s not even factoring in the serious information security risk that comes with paper, since a corporate spy or other sabotage can be done when a person steals an important paper or takes photos of it. For these reasons and more, secure paper shredding is highly advisable. A commercial paper shredder can get the job done, but for bigger loads, an industrial office shredder may be required. Even level 6 shredding may be required.
Security and Paper
Paper of all kinds is critical for getting work done in the professional world, and it will always have a place in business. The bad news is that paper can be a liability for security purposes, and corporate espionage or other criminal activity may be made easier by the careless storage or security of paper documents like budget or financial reports or plans for future activity. As mentioned above, a person may take photos of papers with vital information and hand it over to a competitor or other interested party, or even make copies of that document and steal them. Other problems may arise when too much paper builds up in folders, filing cabinets, and boxes. It wastes a lot of both time and money to find documents that become lost or misfiled, and this can hamper work. All that paper can also be a fire hazard.
Private citizens may want to invest in secure paper shredding as well. People today also put sensitive information on paper, ranging from finances to their social security number to credit card information and physical addresses, and this information can also be stolen if the papers are taken or if photos are taken of them. Statistics show that this happens often; nearly 30% of all consumers don’t even shred documents with sensitive information before throwing them away, and 49% of consumers, nearly half, say that their security habits make them vulnerable to white collar crimes. And 40% of consumers say that they would stop doing business with a company that suffers a security breach. What can be done about all this?
Secure Paper Shredding
Company staff members and consumers alike can take part in secure paper shredding to keep criminals’ hands off of their sensitive information. For smaller jobs, secure paper shredding simply means that a person can visit their local hardware store or office supply store and buy a paper shredder whose capacity fits the expected paper load. A high security paper shredder will finely slice up the documents placed inside and make reassembly of those documents nearly impossible. The shreds can be put into bags and easily contributed to paper recycling efforts.
Companies today will almost certainly want to invest in secure paper shredding as well, and a company might find itself bankrupt if passwords or account numbers are stolen. For bigger jobs, entire crews can be hired to shred many pounds of paper in a day or two, and all this shredded paper may be recycled. Of course, before the documents are shredded, they will also be scanned and uploaded as digital image files onto the company’s private computer server or their Cloud storage service. Such digital documents can be very convenient for employees who work from home or are working while traveling, and many managers are interested in this sort of flexibility. As a bonus, scanning and shredding all these paper documents also means clearing out a lot of physical space and removing a fire hazard from the workplace. All that free space can be put to other uses, and files will not be misplaced or lost so easily.
