Learn More about End-of-the-Year Shredding Best Practices
Another year is almost over and this one has been like no other in our lifetimes. With the global coronavirus crisis still looming large and destroying lives and livelihoods, most of us have modified our ways of learning, working, playing, and socializing. In this challenging year, it’s possible that you may have left many non-emergency tasks, such as paper shredding unattended due to other business exigencies and priorities. However, before the close of 2020, now is the time to take stock and protect your confidential or sensitive information from falling in the wrong hands.
Have you accumulated tons of paper documents that are now redundant? Did you replace any devices because they were old, outdated, or broken? Whether it is physical or digital information, secure destruction of business data and information is not just a smart move; it is a necessity for protecting the growth and reputation of your company. The data destruction experts at TITAN Mobile Shredding offer some end-of-the-year shredding tips to help you secure the future of your business before a busy new year gets underway.
5 Steps for Safe and Efficient Destruction of Confidential Physical or Digital Information
Set up a Formal Year-End Shredding Process/ Practice: Your year-end business calendar may be hectic with a number of concurrent and critical activities. Hence, a formalized approach will ensure that your staff takes the document and hard drive destruction process seriously. In order to make sure that there is no neglect or accidental misses:
- Send out a formal communication requesting everyone to collect documents or devices that need secure destruction.
- Set up one or more designated collection points and make a clean-out schedule for all your teams.
- Appoint representatives who will be responsible for gathering all the items and overseeing the shredding process.
Do a Deep Dive: Based on the size, complexity, and geographical spread of your business, it may or may not be possible to look through every document at every location every year. Which means, it is quite likely that you may have accumulated huge piles of redundant files and folders over several years? If that is the case, consider doing one massive exercise and a complete deep dive to clear the backlog of all physical and digital information that needs shredding. Once you are up-to-date on this, the yearly effort will be minimal. If December is a tough month for such an undertaking, schedule this project in early January, when things might be a little less hectic for your business.
Review Preservation Guidelines: While you gather all the files, folders and devices for shredding, review the retention schedule for specific types of documents. Whether it is your company policies, regulatory guidelines, or industry norms, ensure compliance with all applicable statutes for permanent preservation or timed retention of information. If you have a formal document management policy or in-house document retention guidelines, the end of the year is a good time to assess whether these policies need any modifications, and whether your business needs to implement a ‘shred-all’ policy.
Look beyond Documents: Besides paper documents, hard drives, thumb drives and other digital media, take stock of any other items that require secure destruction. There may be company uniforms, IDs, badges, old marketing materials, or even excess inventory occupying precious storage space in your warehouses. Many professional shredding companies offer product shredding services to help you get rid of such items safely, and ensure that they do not end up in landfills.
Create a Formal Shredding Schedule: At the end of the year, assess whether you need to alter the frequency of your shredding service. Has business growth led to increased output of paper waste? Were your recycling or shredding bins overflowing frequently through the year? Are there any security concerns that you are keen to address this year? Based on this review, you may want to modify your shredding schedule from once a year to bi-annual or quarterly, if required. If most of your staff is going to continue working from home for the foreseeable future, you may also want to consider organizing residential pickups or special shredding events, in place of the routine shredding that happens at your office locations.
Partner with TITAN Mobile Shredding for Affordable, Reliable Secure Shredding Services
At TITAN Mobile Shredding, we offer a number of off-site and on-site shredding services for paper documents and digital drives. As a NAID AAA Certified company, with industry-specific solutions, we help you remain legally compliant at all times. You can count on us for efficient and affordable plans to securely destroy physical and digital information, as well as specialized product destruction services.
Ready to usher in a safe and secure New Year for your business? Hire the experts at TITAN Mobile Shredding for systematic and permanent destruction of sensitive or confidential business information in physical and digital format. Call (866) 848-2699 or contact us online to learn more about our services.
