Having a paper shredder is no longer a luxury for your business or home office. With the epidemic of identity theft, as well as new federal regulations, it is now a necessity. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that over 27 million people have had their identity stolen in the past five years. At the same time, they estimate that billions of dollars have been lost due to corporate espionage. It it just a simple fact, the wrong paper in the wrong hands poses an ever increasing risk to both individuals and businesses. How can you and your business fight this trend? Buy a paper shredder. This article will discuss some of the great benefits to owning a shredder, and what shredder for you and your business.
1. Peace of Mind: Owning your own paper shredder allows you to feel secure, knowing that your most private and sensitive data will never fall into the wrong hands. How do you know this? Because you can see your most sensitive documents being destroyed into tiny little pieces right before your eyes. Sure, there are services out there that will do your shredding for you. However, between the person who picks up the papers, the truck driver, or the recycling center employee, there are a lot of links in that chain. Are you sure that you can trust them all?
2. Convenience: If you run a larger office, you more than likely have papers that you need to destroy nearly every day. Instead of letting those papers pile up (inviting prying eyes), you should seriously consider letting any employee that regularly handles sensitive documents have their own desk side paper shredder. This way, they can destroy sensitive information whenever they see fit. This is, of course, ideal for departments that handle confidential documents on a regular basis, such as Human Resources, Accounting, Legal, and Marketing.
3. Compliance: Recent laws have been enacted that require that businesses who are in possession of employee information, information on prospective employees, or personal information derived from consumer reports to completely destroy that information before throwing it away. This includes social security numbers, credit histories, employment histories, and address information. If you are in the healthcare industry, there are specific guidelines to what information you must destroy and the precautions that you need to take to prevent such information from getting into the wrong hands. Nearly every organization is affected by these laws and the failure to be compliant can be extremely costly. In fact, the penalties for non compliance range from civil liability to fines of $500,000 and ten years imprisonment.
4. Cost Reduction: We ve already discussed the security concerns that go along with leaving your sensitive and confidential documents in the hands of a shredding company. In addition to the peace of mind that you will get from ensuring sensitive information does not leave your facility, shredding your own documents can also save you money. Making a one time capital investment in a paper shredder can allow you to eliminate the on going cost of shredding service fees that add up over time. Simply put, there is no more cost effective or secure way to ensure confidentiality than doing your shredding yourself.
Author Resource:
Jeff McRitchie is the designer and Director of Marketing for http://www.mybinding.com .He has written over 500 articles on binding machines,binding covers,binders,laminators,binding supplies,laminating supplies,paper handling equipments,index tabs, and shredders.
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