When it comes to protecting secure information, companies can never be too careful these days. Think about any news report you’ve seen in the last six months or a year, informing you on the latest data breaches of big companies or local stories of identity theft. In 2017, more than 16 million people were victims of identity theft. That number is estimated to have fallen to a little more than 14 million in 2018, but those numbers are still alarmingly high nonetheless.
One of the best ways companies can protect themselves against theft and breaches is with secure paper shredding. Top executives from many companies have indicated in surveys that making sure company records are secure is one of the most crucial aspects of their businesses. With secure paper shredding, that can happen and it can happen all the time.
What can companies gain from secure paper shredding? As it turns out, a lot. With secure paper shredding, companies can gain the following benefits:
- Following the law: Believe it or not, confidential documents like salary details, address forms and medical records are required by law to be disposed of properly. The Data Protection Act requires companies to do this to ensure that confidential data remains just that, confidential.
- Saving time: If yours is a company that deals with a lot of paper every day, you’re dealing with a lot of confidential information. As a result, that means there’s a lot of documents to dispose of. Rather than spending hours manually cutting and ripping documents, you can use secure paper shredders to save lots of time, money and aggravation.
- Peace of mind: The use of paper shredders in the office helps put businesses and their customers at ease. Why? Customers feel better knowing their confidential information is still confidential and businesses have peace of mind knowing they’ve protected customers.
- Happy employees: With all of the paper and information that businesses deal with on an everyday basis, it’s likely that some of that information also concerns employees. Information like salary details or staff restructures are confidential and if employees got ahold of them, there could be potentially bad consequences. With shredders, companies are able to dispose of information when they’re done with, ensuring employees won’t stumble upon information they aren’t supposed to see.
- Helping the environment: Document disposal and paper shredding keeps customers, employees and companies safe, but another bonus is that its eco-friendly. Think of all the paper your company uses on a daily basis for printing, for sketching, for internal memos and other things. Trashing all of that paper would be a lot for a landfill to handle. But by using paper shredders to dispose of documents, you’re doing a great service to the environment. Make no mistake: though the world is becoming increasingly paperless, paper still has an important role to play for many companies.
- Trust: By using a shredder at the office or even going through a shredding company, you’re helping maintain a strong level of trust when you dispose of customers’ confidential information properly. You’re keeping their identity safe and making sure information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
- Clean disposal: If paper is a big part of how your company does busy, odds are pretty good that there are drawers and filing cabinets and desktop trays that might be packed to the gills with old, outdated and otherwise not-needed information. Using secure paper shredding can help you and your company eliminate a lot of clutter, so you’ve got the most up-to-date information and aren’t searching aimlessly for an important document someone put somewhere. This can also be a great thing to do at home. If you’ve got a lot of clutter at home, you can likely find a company to help you use a high capacity paper shredder to clean up your home office.
As you can see, there are many positive benefits to be gained from companies using secure paper shredding to dispose of documents. With high security paper shredders, companies can protect themselves from theft or breaches, maintain a strong level of trust with customers and eliminate a lot of the clutter around the office.