How Shredding Practices Have an Impact on Your Business Fraud Vulnerability
Information seems to be under siege these days, and paper documents are just as vulnerable as electronic records. While regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB), and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACTA) were enacted in an attempt to provide legal requirements for disposing of confidential information, negligent document disposal practices within organizations of all types as still run rampant—as evidenced by increasing rates of fraud. Refining your current paper shredding processes can help reduce the risk of fraud within your business.
Scheduled shredding increases productivity and reduces privacy breach risk
Paper shredding machines seem indispensable until you assess how much they cost your business in wasted time and lost productivity. Shredding an entire file folder full of paper can take several minutes or longer if a paper jam rears its ugly head. Because of the time commitment, your employees may procrastinate shredding sensitive documents or avoid the process altogether, which could result in confidential files being permanently left in workstations or ending up in the trash.
A scheduled shred service places secure shred bins in your office where whole files can be disposed of in seconds. Because the process is so easy and convenient, your staff is more likely to use these secure bins to dispose of sensitive documents in a timely manner, thereby reducing the likelihood of a privacy breach. Your document shredding company should accurately assess your disposal requirements and tailor your shred collection container size and destruction schedule to your business needs.
Periodic file purging is good records management policy
Holding on to information longer than legally necessary also increases privacy breach exposure for your company. Documents that have outlived required retention periods may sit idle for years. Because they are no longer utilized, they can easily go missing—undetected—and cause a great deal of legal liability and non-compliance problems. As a result, it’s important to schedule periodic purges of no-longer-needed files.
Why NAID AAA Certified destruction matters
When entrusting the disposal of your business documents to a third party, it’s important to have confidence that the company you choose is utilizing processes and procedures that reduce the risk of confidential information exposure. A NAID (National Association of Information Destruction) AAA Certified document shredding company has undergone an extensive audit, assessing employee screening procedures, security measures, destruction processes, and the equipment used to destroy your information. You even have the ability to verify certification directly with NAID.
In reality, there isn’t a “silver bullet” solution for preventing theft of personal and corporate information—the threat will always be out there. However, implementing a professional document shredding solution can significantly reduce the risk to your business.
Richards & Richards provides document shredding solutions to businesses throughout Nashville. To find out more, please contact us by phone or complete the form on this page.
