What happens to your data once you’re finished with it? These days, it doesn’t just sit in a filing cabinet. It can come back to haunt your business.
After all, 1 in 5 data breaches involve paper records.
Document destruction is more than just a convenient spring cleaning technique. It’s a way to protect what matters to your business. And yet, many business fall victim to the same mistakes when destroying documents. Here are a few of the big ones—and what you should do instead.
Document Shredding…with the Office Paper Shredder
You need to destroy a document. You head to the office paper shredder. Right?
Wrong.
While your office shredder may seem like a good idea for destroying the occasional document, it’s an impractical and insecure choice for large-scale document destruction. After all, you can only shred a limited amount of paper, the receptacle has to be emptied often, and when you dump the receptacle, your shredded paper goes in the dumpster—where anyone could steal it and piece documents back together.
Also, keep in mind that you may need to destroy things that don’t go through the shredder at all. We’re talking hard drive destruction.
If you want to save time and money while investing in peace of mind, it’s a good idea to hire a trusted document destruction service. They deliver locked collection containers to your office, and when the containers are full, a background-checked shredding technician either destroys the contents on-site or transports them to a destruction facility.
Neglecting Data Destruction
Remember, your work doesn’t end with document destruction. Unless you write everything by hand, you also have to worry about data destruction.
Regardless of the format, you need to protect data. Otherwise, you may be in violation of data disposal laws, regardless of whether or not you destroyed the paper document. After all, if a copy of the document still exists electronically, the data still exists.
Unless you have the tools and expertise to destroy a hard drive, the best approach to data destruction is to hire a professional data destruction service. These services can safely dispose of your old hard drives and data, ensuring that no data is recoverable and providing a certificate of destruction.
Not Using Data Erasure Software to Ensure Compliance
If you have data lurking on your hard drives but don’t want to trash the hard drives just yet, you have to handle data erasure. In this case, the single biggest mistake is simply deleting the documents rather than using data erasure software to ensure compliance.
A data erasure software like Certus erasure software is designed to ensure compliance with applicable data privacy and data erasure laws. Basically, they stay abreast of the law so that you don’t have to worry about it. It’s a hassle-free way to avoid future data headaches.
Need More Tips on Document Destruction and Destroying Data?
Hey, we get it. Document destruction can be a headache. But it’s also an investment in your busienss’s staying power, and you need to take charge of document destruction so that your business can stay focused on what comes next.
Need more tips on document destruction? Make sure to check out our blog for more great posts like this one.
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