Free Document Shredding? 3 Ways Doing It Yourself Could Actually Increase Costs
Many organizations think they can save money by shredding business records in-house with an office shredder. While it may seem like an easy way to reduce overhead costs by having an employee handle the document destruction, there are hidden costs and risks associated with shredding confidential records in-house.
If you’re thinking about shredding documents in-house, it’s important to take information security into account before you start on a shred project. Relying on an employee who has not undergone data security training to destroy sensitive records including HR files, financial information, tax records and more, can leave your company vulnerable to a security breach, lawsuit, or compliance violation – which could prove costly in the long run. Without a formal document destruction schedule, you’re also at risk of destroying an important record on accident, or leaving out certain files that were meant to be shredded. Lack of security and verification with in-house shredding can lead to disorganization and make it more difficult to track which information has already been destroyed.
If you work in a heavily-regulated industry with strict data security and compliance standards, you are most likely required to provide proof of secure destruction. Shredding in-house doesn’t provide any certified proof of destruction in the event of an audit. A document shredding provider acts as a secure third-party that can certify your business records were securely and ethically destroyed while following NAID-certified shredding best practices. A Certificate of Destruction will be provided after every shred project, allowing you to keep track of what documents were destroyed and when.
Office paper shredders do not offer the speed and efficiency of a document shredding service’s industrial shred equipment. With in-house document shredding, employees spend a lot of time removing staples and paper clips, tediously separating stacks of paper into manageable portions for the shredder, and then slowly feeding the paper through. Shredding just one file cabinet of records could take hours of an employee’s time! That’s a lot of effort and still doesn’t take into account time spent on jammed shred machines and cleanup.
A secure shredding service streamlines the entire document shredding process for your business. At Record Storage Systems, our industrial shredder is capable of shredding up to 4-5 tons of paper per hour.
Get a document shredding quote here.
