Document shredding is achieved by mechanically cutting paper down into small enough pieces that the information on the paper cannot be retrieved. It’s often necessary in businesses, because they may have access to clients’ or employees’ personal information, which can be highly sensitive and confidential. This kind of information can be easily misused if it ends up in the wrong hands. Identity theft is a huge and ever-present threat, and combating it effectively is key for any business that has this type of document. These can include banks, hospitals, libraries, schools, corporations, and many other institutions.
Most places like this, which provide services that involve obtaining potentially sensitive information are required by law to protect the privacy of their clients. Even if it isn’t required by law, it’s best practice to do so, and should be of high concern. A company that allows its customers’ information to be compromised is probably not a very good company. Plus many of these businesses and organizations are well known to have access to this type of personal information and therefore can be targets for would-be identity thieves; shredding important documents can help mitigate this risk.
Fortunately, document shredding in Plano TX is a fairly easy process and is incredibly effective at protecting the information contained in the documents. When properly shredded, the documents cannot be reconstructed, so there’s no risk of the information being compromised. This paper can then be recycled.
Small amounts of document shredding can be handled with machines for personal use. However, small machines can’t often cope with high volumes of paper to be shredded, and many organizations – like financial, medical, or government institutions – have high volumes of documents in need of shredding. In these cases, it’s often best to hire a service to come to shred large quantities of paper with more industrial equipment. This is best when there’s a lot of shredding to do, or when the need is reoccurring. These companies can either come to the business site to shred, which is the most secure option, or the materials can be shipped to the shredding company and they can shred the documents there. They can usually do either of these on an as-needed schedule or they can set a repeating schedule. An additional beneficial service offered by some of the companies that offer document shredding is the ability to dispose of “E-waste” as well, things like hard drives that can retain sensitive data if they aren’t properly destroyed.
One other reason a large quantity of documents may need to be shredded would be in order to free up space. With the increasing popularity and accessibility of digitized records and such, many older documents are scanned and made into digital copies. This is obviously a lot more space effective, but often the old hard copies of the documents should still be destroyed in a secure manner. Contact Action Shred of Texas for more information.
