We are living in the paperless era, where companies store data on hard drives, flash disks, and other electronic storage devices. This might make most business owners think they are better off with a simple paper shredder to dispose of documents, as they won’t be producing much paper waste. But paper shredders are not very secure and efficient when handling high volume of sensitive and confidential records. They also come with high maintenance costs and can pose a severe danger to the person using them. There are many risks associated with a company handling document destruction with an office shredder. Here is a detailed list of why you should not use paper shredders.
Time-consuming
Most paper shredders only shred 10 to 20 pages at a time. Therefore, if you have tons of documents to shred, a lot of time will be spent, and the process is tiresome as you keep feeding the shredder a few pages at a time. Paper jams are also common when you shred too many papers at once, and overheating can occur. Hence, requiring you to shut it down and wait until it cools off to run again.
This is not an efficient way to destroy paper documents, as you will likely shred only a few pages per hour. However, at Atlantic Shredding, our shredders securely cross-cut 200 pounds of paper a minute, saving you time.
Reduces Employee Productivity
If a company relies on a shredder paper to destroy unwanted documents, the business owner/manager will most likely relegate document shredding tasks to certain employees. This means taking workers off their current duties, which affects business productivity.
Contracting a professional shredding service eliminates the need to reassign duties, and employee production remains on company work as the employees will focus on tasks that are more suited to their position.
Less Secure
The office shredders just cut documents into long strips. Unfortunately, this does not destroy the paper thoroughly, and previously shredded documents can be reconstructed, leaking information that can be used to create identity theft or even spy on your company’s activities.
This isn’t possible if professional firms do the shredding. They use state-of-the-art shredding equipment to make sure the documents are shredded into tiny pieces that no one can identify.
Do Not Comply to Privacy Laws
State and federal information privacy laws require companies to protect the private information of those that they do business with. You should also have proof of how documents in your business are destroyed and disposed of. Unfortunately, paper shredders do not offer any proof, and you can be charged for non-compliance. The charges not only cost you financially but can affect your business’ reputation.
You can prevent this risk by hiring a professional shredding service to ensures the safe destruction of documents as required by the law. The shredding company should also award you a certificate of destruction.
Risks Internal Fraud
Relying on employees to destroy sensitive records using an office shredder can compromise the company’s privacy. There is a possibility an unethical employee can claim the documents have been shredded when they haven’t been.
A certified shredding company will offer locked shred bins where you can safely keep sensitive documents that need to be destroyed while preventing unauthorized access. This allows your business to follow the NIST and NSA security guidelines, where all information must be handled with confidentiality from its inception to the point of disposal.
The five points above build up a strong case for why you should not use a shredder paper. Instead, contact the professionals at Atlantic Shredding for proper shredding of all your documents. We are reliable, value privacy and will offer a certificate of destruction with every job, no matter the size of the job.