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Useful Information

• Why Shred?
• Using a Shredding Service?
• Choosing a Shredder?
• Why Intimus?
• Which Security Level?

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Using a Shredding Service?

If you’re using a shredding service, you’re putting your company’s security at risk. Documents that are for your eyes only are always the ones that others want to see. When it comes to protecting your company, customers, and employees, shredding sensitive data is imperative. But shredding your data before it leaves the building is the only way to be absolutely sure it was destroyed prior to someone else seeing it. When you hand over documents to a shredding service, you are relinquishing control of your security program. A complete stranger is now in possession of your sensitive data. Would you feel comfortable handing that same person a box containing your personal bank and credit card statements and then watching him walk out the door with them? If the answer is no, you should consider eliminating the middle man and shredding “at the source” with the Intimus range of Shredding machines.

What’s in a name?

Today, many services offer “on-site” shredding. This is a reassuring term, but consider that even if they shred the material on site. Which more often than not means outside your building! Your confidential waste still leaves the building in the hands of strangers documents may be piled up outside lot awaiting their turn to be shredded, someone has to take time off work to watch the process if you want to be absolutely certain your documents were shredded. The main motivator behind any shredding service is not your security–it’s their profit. Shredding services deal in bulk. The faster they work, the more clients they can service. In addition, using low-cost labor means a higher profit margin. This combination of speed and cut-rate labor means a high probability for mistakes, which you can’t afford them to make. All it takes is one box of documents left behind on a curb to put your company in a world of trouble.

Think of the cost

Outsourcing shredding is a constant expense which will never decrease. Inevitable economic factors will take their toll on the shredding service, and these costs will get passed on to you. They include:

• Rising fuel prices
• Van and equipment maintenance
• Higher labor costs
• Increases in liability insurance premiums
• Inflation

In many cases, a company can purchase an Intimus shredder(s) capable of handling all their shredding needs for less than the cost of using a shredding service for a single year. With over 40 models to choose from in six security levels, there’s an intimus shredder to fit every application and budget.

You can’t delegate document security

A common misconception about shredding services is that once they take possession of your data, the responsibility for safeguarding it passes to them. The truth of the matter is that all businesses maintaining confidentiality of records cannot transfer the responsibility of properly disposing them to an outside contractor. The legal responsibility for the security of the information remains with the business. A certificate of destruction is not a legal document that will absolve the business from responsibility / liability in a court of law. Sensitive information of both a personal and business nature, such as financial information or strategic details, should be disposed of securely. Even now, large organisations throw out confidential documents without thinking of the potential consequences should the files end up in the wrong hands. What's more, since the Data Protection Act was passed in 1998.

Business documents that should be shredded include:

• Personnel - Salary details, personal data, restructuring plans, pension records, banking details.
• Sales and Marketing – Sales forecasts, customer data, competitor information, new product development.
• Production – New tooling, drawings, costing, work schedules.
• Reception – Visitor information, staff movements.
• Photocopier/Printer/Fax – surplus or simply forgotten sensitive documents should be shredded to decrease a security risk.
  

Personal documents that should be shredded include:

• Financial - Bank statements, phone bills, utility bills.
• Personal - Letters, any correspondance that may contain personal information

It is also a good idea to ensure that old CDs which may contain sensitive information, or credit cards are shredded too. Many shredders offer this functionality.