5 Reasons Your Office Needs to Shred...Everything
by Stephanie Faris on Tuesday, November 7, 2017 12:00
Working in an office can be an adventure. Multiple personality types congregate in the same general area, diligently moving through their daily to-do list while trying to deal with any interpersonal issues that arise.
In the middle of this is the IT security team, who must try to find a way to ensure the network stays safe without interfering with each worker's ability to get the job done.
Due to escalating security issues, though, many businesses have been forced to take a stronger stance in order to keep their customers safe.
This means putting strict security protocols in place and making each employee accountable for following them. One of the best things you can do to keep your business safe is to shred everything.
Reports, letters, hard drives, leftover floppy discs, and anything else you have that might contain sensitive data. Here are five reasons your business should put shredding programs in place.
Your Customers Trust You
No matter how long you've been in business, your customers likely depend on you to keep their information safe.
Nobody hands over a social security or credit card number thinking the information will be left unsecured for hackers to steal.
If a breach does happen, you'll erode that foundation of trust you've worked so hard to build, likely leading to a permanent loss of customers.
Your Employees Trust You
Good employees aren't so easy to find, as you've likely noticed.
The private data you store on them can put their safety and credit at risk, leading to a drop in morale that affects productivity as well as their longevity with your company.
Safeguard any data you store on your workers, including their home address, phone numbers, personal email addresses, and social security numbers.
You're Required to Do So
Depending on the type of business you do, you're likely answerable to some type of regulatory authority.
Whether it's HIPAA laws that protect any healthcare information you collect or the PCI DSS laws that relate to gathering credit card information, you could face penalties if you fail to properly protect all data.
Breaches Cost Money
Although it varies from year to year, there's a significant financial cost to a security breach.
This applies whether the information is leaked through your own devices or paper documents you failed to shred. For a data breach alone, IBM estimates a business will suffer an average cost of $3.62 million.
It's Environmentally Friendly
If your company is environmentally-conscious, shredding can also help in that area.
This is especially true of paper shredding, since the finished product can be used to pad your shipments or recycled into paper products.
Even shredding your hard drives means you can safely recycle your used electronics.
NCWS specializes in safely offloading old equipment.
We can supplement your paper shredding processes with our two-step hard drive erasure process, which eliminates all the data on the drive through degaussing and further ensures safety by shredding the physical drive.
This brings the peace of mind of knowing that your customer and employee data stays safe even as you're keeping your workspaces tidy.