Do you handle sensitive information in your workplace? The average office shredder seems like an inexpensive way to destroy confidential documents. The office shredder can be risky and more costly than you may think.
There are rigorous document destruction policies globally in place for very good reasons. The impact, especially in a digital age, of becoming victim to identity theft, fraud and other fraudulent crimes is substantial.
Here are the hidden costs and risks of shredding documents in an office shredder:
- The shredder: This may have a fixed, relatively low up-front price tag. There are additional maintenance, replacement and cleaning costs to be considered. The shredding of large amounts of paper in-house can also produce a fine dust, affecting employee health.
- Human Error: It’s only human nature to make mistakes but a mistake when shredding can be detrimental. Office shredding often leaves the decisions on what to shred up to the employees. Negligence on an employees behalf can cause significant threat to information safety.
- Compliance: When shredding is done in the office, the employees responsible for the process. They often do not have suitable training in document security, retention and disposal. There is also no proof of secure document destruction when shredding in-office
- Labour: How could you forget about time and productivity costs of employees when they must spend their valuable time shredding documents. Office shredders can’t handle paper clips and staples (so these will need to be removed by the employees) and documents need to be arranged into easy to shred portions then manually fed into the paper shredder. The employees will also need to empty receptacles and clean up…on the clock.
- Effectiveness: Paper is often cut into long strips by office-grade shredders. These can easily be pieced back together and increase the risk of a security breach.
Some of the benefits to using a reliable document shredding service:
- Sensitive documents are removed from the workplace for shredding with industrial grade equipment so employees are not affected by fine dust.
- A shred-it-all policy reduces the risk of human error and all documents provided to a reliable document shredding service like ours, are disposed under strict guidelines.
- Staff at our reliable document shredding centres have been cleared to a minimum required by the National Police Records Check
- Compliance requirements are met by using a reliable document shredding service as a Certificate of Destruction is provided after every shred for audit purposes.
- Whole files can be shredded by a reliable document shredding service so no need to remove paper clips and staples
- Documents are cross-shredded and destroyed into fragments that cannot be reassembled before they are transferred to a paper recycling facility where they will be recycled into paper products
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To learn more about how we can protect your documents and security, please contact us on 1800 001 008 or contact us here.