Should your business outsource shredding?
In the 21st century, securing privacy is more important than ever with hackers and identity theft on the rise in numbers and sophistication. In addition, the United States government has introduced legislation
that regulates the traffic of private information in order to protect consumers and businesses from predators.
However, the question is whether to handle the shredding in house or outsourcing it to a company. There can be advantages and disadvantages to both, but unless you are a large corporation that can support the necessary infrastructure to keep up with and follow information regulations, chances are outsourcing is probably a better option.
Shredding and Recycling – Two Services In One
In addition to the concerns about privacy and protecting sensitive information, there has been a surge in awareness about being environmentally friendly and reducing the waste and excess that capitalism produces. Many companies offer paper recycling, as well as other recycling services, but do not also protect the security of the papers being recycled. If you go with outsourcing a shredding company, you are essentially getting two services in one. You can kill two birds with one stone and be comfortable and secure in the knowledge that you are protecting clients and employees sensitive information in an environmentally responsible way.
Benefits to Outsourcing Document Shredding
As stated before, in house shredding can be done responsibly but may require more time and resources than makes sense for your businesses budget, staffing, and business model. Below are several benefits of outsourcing your shredding needs:
- Focus on the core competencies and what your business does best.Keeping up with legislation and regulations in itself can be a lot of effort.Outsourcing shredding is a way that you can spend more time on what your business does best and let the shredding company focus on what it does best; shredding and recycling documents in a politically and environmentally friendly way.
- On-Site document shredding.Having documents shredded on site is more secure than offsite options because there is less time between the documents leaving your establishment and being destroyed. Also, on site shredding is convenient because you can schedule a time for the shredders to come to your establishment so you don’t have to worry about transporting them yourselves.
- Certificate of destruction.A reputable shredding service should have no problem giving you a certificate of destruction if their policies and procedures are secure. This also provides your business with an extra level of protection in case there are any disputes on your practices.
- Convenient and less time consuming.Manually shredding all of your documents can take up precious time that could be spent towards value-adding activities. Also, office shredders often require you to remove all staples and paper clips whereas mobile shredding companies have the capability of just throwing it in and moving on.
- Secured containers with locks on site.To make things simple and convenient, shredding services provide containers where you can put all of your customer and employee sensitive information that are secured with locks so unauthorized personnel cannot access the documents.
- Environmentally friendly.In addition to compliance with regulations, shredding services will recycle your shredded paperwork so that it can be reused and reduce the amount of trees that have to be cut down for future paper.
Making the decision to outsource your shredding and paper recycling is only the first step in compliance with privacy regulations. The next step is to make an educated decision on which shredding company is the most cost effective and reputable in terms of following laws. The best way to do this is to verify other companies the company works with as well as ask for a certificate of destruction.
