Shredding Solutions

Membership in the National Association for Information Destruction is your assurance of superior service. The goal of NAID is to promote the industry and establish standards and ethics for its participating membership.

Proper document disposal is a hallmark of good business. Knowing the laws that are implemented to protect you, your employees and patrons of your business keep the threat of identity theft at bay and reduce the consequence of possible legal action.

Onsite document disposal can extend to much more than just paper. It's important to also destroy such items as checks, computer backups, x-rays, product samples, prototypes, and CD-ROMs.

Many business espionage professionals consider a company's trash to be its single most available source of competitive and private information. Any documents in a dumpster are readily (and legally) available to anyone willing to dig for them.

Under the federal Disposal Rule, you are allowed your choice of disposal method based on the security level of the information. Document shredding reliably destroys the information without creating any unwanted environmental byproduct (such as smoke when burning files).

Document shredding doesn't just cover personal and financial information. It also includes confidential information about how you run your business. Anything you wouldn't want a competing business to use (i.e., special ingredients for a recipe, unique business structure, or other intellectual property) should be shredded.

Most mobile shredding trucks use the hammer mill method, which tears the paper (or other material) into pieces that have to fit through a screen. This ensures that no sensitive data survives the shredding process.

Your sensitive materials are secured and monitored from the time they're collected until they're destroyed. The documents are deposited directly from the bin into the shredder, which ensures that they are never directly handled.

So what exactly does your business need to shred? This would include all strategic reports, legal contracts, and executive correspondence, as well as human resource, operations, procurement, research and development, accounting, sales and marketing, and IT documents.

Personnel records should be retained for three years after an employee leaves the company, especially if he or she was terminated. Employee earnings should be kept for at least four years, to meet various state and federal requirements.

Besides the dangers inherent in transporting whole documents to a disposal site, there is also a problem at the location. Paper is hand sorted according to weight, making the documents vulnerable to prying eyes and security breaches.

A business should always take the precaution of destroying documents that contain proprietary information before discarding them. Those that fail to do so could potentially face criminal and civil prosecution.

Staying up to date on the changing privacy and disposal laws will give your business the edge against identity theft criminals. Utilizing our document shredding services is a step towards increased security for you and your consumers.