How OUTSOURCING Your Shredding Is MORE SECURE and LESS EXPENSIVE Than Shredding It Yourself
If concern about privacy protection, new shredding laws, and identity theft sent you out to buy an office shredder (or has you thinking about it), you may want to rethink that decision.
Not only is using a NAID Member the most convenient and economical shredding solution, it is the best way to protect your company in the face of new information protection regulations.
Discarded shreds only tell the bad guys what to take.
The shredded materials from an office shredder are relatively easy to put back together. There is even a service available that electronically scans shreds for the purpose of reconstructing documents. If your shreds are simply thrown out in the office trash, all you have done is show the dumpster divers what to take.
NAID Members shred massive volumes of material which during the process is commingled with materials from scores of other businesses. As a result, it is virtually impossible to reconstruct any single document. And, because the vast majority of NAID Members recycle the shredded materials, the process they use does not create a situation where the shredded materials are retrievable
Employees don't use shredders!
In most small and medium sized offices, employees are already overwhelmed with work. It is not realistic to expect that a busy employee is going to faithfully go through the time-consuming inconvenience of laboriously putting everything they should destroy through a slow office shredder. Even if they place the materials near the shredder, someone often decides to throw them out to avoid the hassle and mess.
NAM Members provide secure containers into which employees can securely and conveniently deposit the documents that should be shredded. Simply put, convenience equals compliance and peace of mind.
Shredding yourself provides no record of compliance.
In the event of a privacy violation, complaint or audit, it is very likely that your firm will be asked to verify its compliance to information protection regulations. Shredding discarded information yourself provides you with no verifiable record of ongoing regulatory compliance.
Using a NAID Member's service gives you a verified, ongoing record of regular compliance with legally mandated information destruction requirements.
Employees should not handle some sensitive information.
When your employees do the shredding, you have two options: 1) You either have entry-level employees shred, in which case you may expose sensitive personnel records and competitive information to individuals not meant to see it, or 2) management-level employees, who are especially busy and paid top dollar to do more important work, do the shredding. Neither situation is acceptable.
Outsourcing to a NAID Member solves this dilemma. Information destruction happens very quickly with little, if any, handling by the shredding service's screened personnel.
Office shredders break down!
If you have ever owned an office shredder, you know they have a tendency to break down - even more so if you use them to shred everything you should. When this happens, the material to be destroyed piles up until the machine is repaired or replaced. The burden can become so great that there is a strong possibility that employees will cut corners and dispose of the material without destroying it in order to catch up.
If you are using a NAID Member, you are out of the equipment business for good. The solution to your information destruction compliance is secure, quick and convenient.
Office shredders won't help you with large record purges!
Even if an office shredder could keep up with the large volume of daily shredding (which, in most cases, it can't), what happens when you have to destroy more records than normal? Maybe you are cleaning old records out of storage or someone just cleans out their office. Even the slightest surge in the amount of material to be destroyed creates a nightmare for employees armed only with a small office shredder.
Of course, the greater risk is that someone will simply decide not to shred it.
NAID Members use industrial shredders capable of destroying hundreds of pounds of material per minute. Even a major purge of records doesn't give their equipment the slightest problem.
The shredder can't handle some large materials .
The papers that need to be shredded are often held together by binders, paper clips, staples and covers. These items normally need to be removed as the office shredders will not handle this material.Tapes, CDs, and other media also have confidential information on them. These items are only going to prematurely end the already short life of the office shredder if you try to destroy them yourself.
By using large industrial destruction equipment, NAID Members can handle anything you throw at them.
And don't forget about those old computers !
Before 'you recycle, discard, donate or sell that old computer, you MUST make sure it has NO personal or competitive information left on it. Countless headlines and broadcast news stories around the world have reported on organizations getting in significant legal trouble because confidential information was found on discarded computers.
NAID Members are information destruction
professionals, first and foremost. Whether they actually destroy information on computers themselves or refer you to a trusted associate, more often than not, they will have a solution.
THE 2 MOST COMMON OUTSOURCING MYTHS
MYTH #1
"Outsourcing is more expensive than shredding it ourselves."
TRUTH:
The only way that having your own shredder is less expensive is if your employees don't use it. When our company destroys everything that it should, it is
far less expensive to outsource than to shred it
yourself.
MYTH #2
"We do not have enough material to warrant a shredding service."
TRUTH:
'An office with just a few employees can generate over 100 pounds of paper every month. That means many hours spent feeding a few sheets at a time into a small office shredder. It is far more secure, economical and convenient to collect these materials in a security container than for you to try to keep up with it.
In the end, complying with current information protection regulations boils down to how much you value your firm's reputation. Protect it for less by using a NAID Member.
WHY USE A NAID MEMBER?
The National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) estimates that there are as many as 2,000 companies in the United States providing information destruction services. However, not every shredding service takes security as seriously as they should. NAID and NAID Members are the trusted resource for information destruction of hundreds of thousands of organizations.
