5 Drawbacks of In-House Shredding
You have two choices for destroying confidential documents: You can shred them in-house or hire a shredding and destruction company. In this blog, we explain why the latter offers the most benefits for your business.
1. Data Breach Risks
In-house shredding can lead to exposure of personal information, especially when shredded documents are tossed into a dumpster or recycling bin where a thief can steal them.
A shredding and destruction service eliminates data breach risks. Your shredding provider places secure shredding collection containers throughout your office, allowing for secure disposal of confidential documents. Depending on the volume of information your business needs to destroy, the security collection containers are collected on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis and your documents are professionally destroyed.
2. Time Consumption
Store-bought shredders are inefficient. Using them for even low-volume document destruction projects consumes time. Every minute spent using a store-bought shredder translates into less time spent on other important tasks. A shredding and destruction service eliminates having to pay your employees to shred instead of performing their core tasks.
3. Cost
In-house shredding is expensive. Paper shredders are cheap and do not withstand heavy use. As a result, maintenance issues are common:
- shredders jam
- blades become dull
- dust and debris clog the machine
- non-paper items like staples and paperclips can cause permanent damage
- overheating with shredder paper inside is a fire risk
Repair, replacement costs and liability can skyrocket. A shredding and destruction service eliminates the cost of maintaining paper shredders.
4. Non-Compliance
Healthcare organizations, law firms, financial services providers, and many other business sectors have a legal obligation to protect information. The following laws mandate specific requirements for the storage, control, access, and disposal of private information:
- HIPAA
- FACTA
- SOX
- GLB
A shredding and destruction service ensures your document destruction policies and procedures comply with state and federal privacy regulations.
5. No Proof of Destruction
Businesses that operate in regulated industries must provide proof of their document destruction practices. In-house shredding does not provide an audit trail. When a shredding and destruction provider destroys your documents, they offer a Certificate of Destruction confirming secure destruction of your information.
Richards & Richards offers NAID AAA Certified shredding and destruction services for businesses throughout Nashville. For more information about our information destruction solutions, please call us at 615-242-9600 or complete the form on this page.
