Here is How Professional Shredders Guard Your Sensitive Data

You may not think about it often, but your home or office is full of information that presents liability risks if identity thieves ever got hold of it. This could mean everything from old business contracts, banking or tax information, or something else.

Do you have records stored in your home or where you work that you don’t want anyone else to see? Here are a few ways professional shredders keep your sensitive data private.

Residential Shredding

A great professional shredder doesn’t only securely destroy your documents, they make it easy for you to do so. If you have a high volume of paper to shred, they should be able to pick it up in a truck and bring it to their facility to destroy. For lighter loads, look for a company that has a mobile shredding truck.

Either way, they make it simple to keep vulnerable documents out of the wrong hands by ensuring all sensitive documents can be destroyed without having to transport heavy boxes. Convenience isn’t everything, though.

The company should also be certified by the National Association for Information Destruction, the industry’s only quality assurance program. After they are done destroying your documents, they should issue a certificate testifying that the documents were indeed absolutely shredded.

Commercial Document Shredding

The odds are high that your office contains information that’s best kept private: between hacking and older forms of corporate espionage, it’s important to proactively protect your sensitive data. Apart from data thieves who take your information so they can impersonate you and drain your bank accounts, there are rivals who may try to get an edge on your company.

There’s a phenomenon called “dumpster diving,” where competition will trawl through your garbage to try to come upon documents bearing trade secrets, data about upcoming marketing campaigns, or something else that can give them an important advantage. It’s essential that any sensitive information you have is destroyed securely, so this nightmare scenario never happens in real life.

Shredding Beyond Paper

Sometimes the data that needs to be destroyed isn’t printed on paper, especially in commercial situations. A great professional shredder is able to securely dispose of any object bearing sensitive information — they deal in information security, not just paper shredding.

This includes a wide range of electronics, such as USB or flash drives, old computers or laptops, printer memory cards, backup tapes, and more. It’s essential that these materials are not merely broken or damaged; the microchips should be destroyed in such a way that data on them is rendered unrecoverable.

The shredder you hire should also be able to handle specialty destruction, including objects like: uniforms with logos, ID or access cards, dental moulds, x-rays, pharmaceutical packaging, and more.

By the time you learn that your data has been compromised, it’s already too late: contact a professional shredder today to protect your personal data, and your company’s.