Is This You?
You’ve got some papers kicking around with personal or confidential information on them. It doesn’t matter if you’re in an office or at your kitchen table. There are papers nearby with information that could be dangerous in the wrong hands.
“I don’t have anything like that,” you think, glancing over at the pile. “I’m just doing my normal daily stuff, it’s not like I’m handling anything critical.” However, this usually isn’t true.
At Home
If you’re at home, you probably have some credit card offers and junk mail on their way to the trash can. If that mail contains your name, address, or a barcode on the front, it may not be safe to throw away in the public trash. Those barcodes on junk mail can contain personally identifying information, like your age, occupation, or what you buy most frequently from a company.
In truth, identity thieves only need a few pieces of information to con their way into accounts under your name. A name and an address are enough to get them started – any additional details make it more likely that they’ll succeed. A copy of your signature is a key to use your existing accounts as they please.
In the Office
The office environment is a bit different, although no less dangerous. Instead of junk mail and coupon flyers, you’re probably dealing with internal memos, notes on customer accounts, or financial printouts with the company’s logo and name on the header. There might even be a decommissioned hard drive or two, or some long-forgotten floppy discs in the back storage room.
As you’ve probably already guessed, none of these items should be thrown out in the regular trash.
In the age of the internet, it’s tempting to assume that the only threats worth your time are the ones found online. While these are certainly serious (in 2018, the average cost of a single compromised record was $148, and went unnoticed for around half of a year), it’s estimated that 40% of all data breaches will be caused by improper disposal and security of paper records.
Side Benefits of On-Site Shredding
We’ll get to the main reason you need on-site shredding in a moment, we promise. First, though, we want to talk about a few of the other reasons on-site shredding is such a useful solution to the problem of document disposal.
It’s Cost-Effective
Is the cost of a professional on-site shredding service really worth the extra security? Well, the short answer is yes, but we’ll walk you through how we got there.
Buying your own shredder for your home or office will set you back about $3,000, assuming you treat yourself to one of the really nice models that cross-cuts your documents. The warranty expires after six months, which means that you’re on the hook for repairs whenever someone accidentally leaves a paper clip on their budget report. That’s not even taking into account the maintenance required to keep it running smoothly.
In addition to these costs, someone’s got to manually collect the documents from however many floors your office has, run the shredder, and take the particles somewhere safe for disposal. That’s several hundred dollars of lost employee time, and that happens every month.
Now, let’s compare all of that mess with an on-site shredding service. The shredding truck arrives promptly, however often you want. The equipment shreds your documents in minutes – not hours, and with no repair time necessary, since everything from paper clips to binders can be thrown in – and takes the particles away to be securely recycled.
All for a fraction of the cost to do it yourself.
It’s Super Secure
On-site shredding trucks are industry-grade for a reason. They’re GPS-tracked, so your documents are never lost or unaccounted for at any time during transit. The shredding mechanism is designed to comply with the highest standards of privacy protection outlined by state and federal legislation. The technician has received rigorous training on the proper handling of confidential materials. You’re issued a Certificate of Destruction at the end of your appointment, so you can prove without a doubt that your materials were properly – and thoroughly – destroyed.
The Number One Reason You Need On-Site Shredding Is…
It saves you time and effort. Simple as that.
Most of us are busy enough without also having to think about the collection, destruction, and transportation of our documents. We do pretty well if we remember to set them aside for disposal at some later point. Time is money, and who wants to waste that on trash collection?
On-site shredding removes all obligation from your shoulders. All you have to do – literally – is separate out the documents that need shredding. For regularly scheduled shredding clients, this could be into a secure locking bin. For homeowners, this might be in a spare cardboard box. Either way, that’s where your task ends.
When your shredding truck arrives (and yes, it will drive right to your front door), all you have to do is tell the technician where the documents you want shredded are. If you’re using locking bins, you don’t even have to do that much – the technician will take care of emptying the bins, shredding the contents, and making sure the bins are set up for continued use.
The shredding machine is built right into the truck, so you’ll be able to watch as your papers are deposited, lifted, and tipped into the shredder. It’s quick, too. The shredding truck can cross-cut over 500,000 sheets of paper per hour, which comes out to 8,334 sheets of paper every minute.
Way better than feeding two sheets at a time through your office shredder, don’t you think?
For more information on on-site shredding, give our office a call at (304) 488-8627. You can also send us a message online for more details about any of our shredding services.