If your company uses a professional provider for document shredding services, it means that paper is not being shredded immediately. That has a lot of advantages, as not disrupting people workflow to shred papers and send the task to be done by professionals that will guarantee that the documents will receive a proper end. It also means that to really claim you have secure paper shredding, the paper must be safe before it is shredded.
It’s convenient for people to keep a pile of documents to be shredded near their desk, adding to it as they work. However, that does not really qualify as a secure paper shredding practice. Between being in use and being shredded, those documents are vulnerable. Even if an office is not open to the public, various repair and maintenance people pass through. People from other departments who might not have the authority to access confidential information might share the space or come in to confer, which tends to risk sensitive information present on documents about to be shredded.
While awaiting professional document shredding services, it’s important to make sure that the paper will be secure and no data has the risk to leak to non-authorized people hands. The way applied to guarantee the security of those documents will vary from company to company. A small office that does not deal with the public coming into the premises can be reasonably confident that keeping sensitive papers in one room that locks is an adequate solution, provided they don’t allow visitors into that room.
A company with more extensive staff or more in-person contact with the public will need a secure container. This container should be large enough to accommodate the volume of paper that accumulates between visits from the document shredding services and it should have a lid or door that can be locked to ensure security. The opening for the paper should not be large enough for someone to reach their hand into it. Of course, someone should have a key to access the container in case something is accidentally placed in it and needs to be retrieved. This approach might sound extreme, but consider that these are people’s personal, financial or medical details and that they deserve to be safeguarded. And of course, they should be in locked file cabinets while they are in use before it is time to dispose of them.
Every company needs to consider their own needs to decide the best way to store documents securely. Part of the equation is how frequently document shredding services come to destroy papers. It’s a matter of finding the balance so that the office doesn’t have a large volume of paper waiting to be destroyed without having their secure paper shredding coming for minimal amounts of paper.
Request a quote from Cyclone. Our team will help you choose the right solution for your business and provide you with a quote via email or phone.
