While you are certainly welcome to bring your documents and storage devices to our shredding facility, many businesses prefer calling in for mobile shredding services. That’s because mobile shredding, also known as on-premise shredding, is the ideal solution for companies concerned with ‘chain of custody’ protocols in regards to sensitive information. This most often pertains to those in the financial or healthcare sector where there are strict guidelines on how identifying information must be destroyed.

Identity theft is a very serious and growing problem that shouldn’t be ignored. Unfortunately, with the big focus on internet security, many businesses and individuals have forgotten that thieves also target trashcans in search of financial and identification papers they can exploit. Here are some of the more common documents thieves look for, how long they should be kept on-premise, and when it’s time for shredding services:

Bank Statements.  Businesses should keep physical copies of bank statements for up to a year. Thanks to the ease of online banking with most financial institutions, private individuals should feel secure in shredding statements as they get them, or whenever they’re ready to make a complete run to the shredders.

Tax Returns.   Tax returns should be kept for up to seven years as this accounts for the period in which you are liable for auditing.

Credit Card Bills.  Businesses and anyone who does contract work should keep credit card bills up to the date when they submit taxes. However, an important caveat is to keep and shred all credit card and loan offers through our professional shredding services. That’s because there are identity thieves who will go through your trash, fill out blank offers, and take advantage of them on your dime. When submitting any credit card payments online, be sure you are dealing with reputable merchants that have ‘https’ in the web address.

All businesses look for ways to save money. However, one place that shouldn’t be overlooked is the benefits of hiring professional shredding services for all of your paper and hard drive destruction needs. While it can be tempting to buy a cheap, in-house  office shredder, they are rarely the right tool for the job. Here are some of the disadvantages associated with using a standard office shredder:

Incomplete shredding.  An office shredder is capable of cutting your papers into smaller strips, but just how effective is that when those strips can be pieced back together? There have been several disturbing accounts of identity thieves rifling through and taping sensitive documents back together to use information for their own personal gains. In contrast, professional shredding services use the highest-grade shredding technology available on the market and we have a thoroughly vetted process to ensure all documents are completely destroyed.

Slow shredding.  Most office shredders can only shred one piece of paper at a time. This is a huge waste of man hours that could otherwise be spent furthering your business. In contrast, professional shredding services will bring in mobile shredding equipment that can destroy whole boxes of documents within minutes. In the end, most businesses save time and money by hiring professional shredding services.

Business owners and operating managers have a ton of issues to consider, from HR protocols to maintaining a positive web persona, but one thing that should never be overlooked is maintaining client/customer confidentiality. Shredding services are a frontline defense in properly destroying sensitive information and keeping it safeguarded from ill-doers.

Here’s what you should consider when contacting outside shredding services to assist in protecting your business:

On-site vs. Off-site.  Some shredding services offer only one or the other, and others offer both on-site and off-site shredding. On-site shredders will bring the equipment to your office to ensure a quick funnel of documents from your office straight into the shredder. For off-site shredders, you’ll have to bring your documents to their site to have them properly disposed.

HIPAA Compliant.  If your business is healthcare-related or has healthcare-related documents, then there are specialized regulations for how medical documents must be destroyed to ensure strict confidentiality protection. Ask potential shredders if their equipment and process is HIPAA compliant before hiring a shredding service.

AAA- Certified by NAID.  NAID — National Association for Information Destruction — offers a voluntary AAA Certification program that only awards companies with the correct training and qualifications to properly shred confidential documents and protect the privacy of companies, their staff, and their customers. Check for the authentic logo on the shredding services’ website and storefront.

Shredding services aren’t just for your standard paper tax returns. The destruction of your sensitive electronic information should also be a priority. Here’s a quick look at why it’s important to have shredding services also destroy your old hard drives:

Foolproof way to destroy data:  Even if you ‘delete’ files on your hard drive, there are plenty of free tools readily available to recover those deleted files. This means if your hard drive gets into the wrong hands, and if you have deleted sensitive information, there’s still a chance thieves could recover it. The only 100% guaranteed way to destroy data stored on your hard drives is through physical destruction.

Destroy the equivalence of millions of pages of documents:  Did you know that 1 terabyte of hard drive space is estimated to fit 85,899,345 pages of Microsoft Word documents? So whether you’re recycling a computer or are finished with tax season, it’s important to always destroy that information before moving on.

It’s the law to shred:  Not only is it in your best interest to destroy data on your hard drive via shredding services, but in many cases it’s against the law not to do so. HIPPA can issue fines of up to $250,000 and ten years in prison for every violation of Patient Health Information privacy rules where sensitive data carelessly gets into the wrong hands.

From the independent contractor to the multi-national corporation, every business generates and accumulates literally tons of confidential papers and other types of media every month. But what do you do when the piles of papers and hardware start to get overwhelming? You call in the paper shredders.

Shredding sensitive documents will ensure that critical information never gets in the wrong hands. This is so important that there are a variety of federal laws that require businesses to destroy or shred certain documents, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which requires the secure storage and destruction of employee health information, and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act, which protects your buyers from becoming the victims of identity theft.

A good rule of thumb is to fully destroy any document that includes yours or anyone else’s Social Security number, passport number, credit card number, bank account information, driver’s license number, phone number, and/or address. Here’s a snapshot of the types of documents that should be destroyed by a shredding service:

Tax forms and any tax related documents

Sensitive employee (and previous employee) documents that include health information, I-9 forms, pay schedule, or time sheets

Expired contracts

Client lists

Credit reports

Monthly bills that contain yours or the business’s full account number

Pre-screened credit card offers and applications along with expired credit cards

Printed emails

Financial documents and statements, including items like returned promissory notes

All documents containing the Social Security numbers of either employees or customers

Invoices

Receipts with signatures

If you’re ever in doubt, get it shredded as it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

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Here’s a quick run through of the types of documents destroyed by shredding services once their time is up:

Bank account statements: Save bank account statements if you’re planning to take a deduction. But otherwise, these can be rounded up and shredded to keep your information safe.

Financial investment statements: Shred monthly and quarterly statements once the new statements arrive. Any yearly investment reports can be kept for tax purposes.

Loan documents: These should be kept in a secured, ideally fire-safe deposit box, until the loan has been paid in full. When the loan is paid and the title or deed is in hand, these documents should be promptly shredded. The same goes for cash advance documents.

Insurance policies: Keep your current insurance information until you have your insurance overage renewed. Once the new documents have arrived, shred the previous insurance files.

Credit card expenses: If you’re like most businesses, then you’ll likely have a company credit card or two. When your credit card statement comes in, keep it for as long as it takes to inspect the charges and then pay what’s owed. If the statement is for a charge that is under warranty, staple it to said warranty and keep it in a secured file. If the statement includes items that you plan on deducting on your next tax cycle, then it should also be saved. In all other scenarios credit card statements and receipts should be promptly shredded.

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Shredding services aren’t just a luxury, but a requirement for most regular business organizations. A variety of federal laws, perhaps most notably the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction (FACTA), require businesses to destroy or shred documents pertaining to sensitive consumer identity information and employee health information. Documents containing this information simply cannot be thrown out with the daily garbage.

A basic guide for determining which type of documents should be destroyed by a shredding service is to check and see whether that document contains:

• Social Security numbers
• Passport numbers
• Driver license numbers
• Bank Account Numbers
• Credit Card numbers

Want a few specifics? The following is a partial list of documents that we (and the government) recommends for shredding:

• Employee health information, recruiting documents, pay schedules, I-9 forms, and time sheets
• Tax forms and tax prep documents
• Personnel files of former employees
• Credit reports
• Expired contracts
• Paid off and returned promissory notes
• Bills and invoices that may contain the business’s or an individual’s full account number
• Expired credit cards and any pre-screened credit card offers

The security level desired by a business in destroying documents will generally correlate to three specific styles of paper-cutting patterns available by modern shredders. These three styles or shredding types are:

1. Strip-cuts  This type of shredding is generally used for low-security documents and destroys documents by cutting the paper into long, thin strips.
2. Cross-cut a.k.a confetti-cut  This shredding type provides mid-range security to cut paper into even smaller rectangles of about an eighth inches square. Most small businesses and high-end consumer markets will find this type of shredding service suitable to their needs.
3. Micro-cut  This provides the highest level of security as documents are nearly obliterated into the smallest of pieces.

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Trying to figure out whether shredding services are necessary for the documents you have at hand? It can be difficult to know precisely where your legal obligations begin and end for consumer and employee privacy. We recommend using shredding services to destroy all documentation of these types:

Consumer documents
It doesn’t take much to leave a consumer vulnerable to identity theft and myriad other crimes; even basic personal information can be combined with social engineering to unravel a person’s privacy and ultimately ruin their finances. You don’t want to be the source of such a story, so take care and shred these documents—it’s the law in most cases anyway.

Employee documents
While not quite as legally regulated as consumer data, employee data nonetheless should be carefully guarded and thoroughly destroyed. You don’t want to end up on the wrong end of a HIPAA violation because a document mentioned some special health consideration for the employee, nor do you want to be responsible for someone’s identity theft.

Confidential corporate documents
Shredding your corporate memos and various confidential documentation protects your business on many levels. Embarrassment from “politically incorrect” employees saying the wrong thing in an email chain, leaks of proprietary technologies and formulas, the potential for profit lost to information leaks is endless. Shred it all, and don’t worry about it.

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Wondering whether our shredding services can handle the sort of sensitive documentation your business or organization needs to be rid of? Whether you’re purging old customer records, getting rid of hard copies after going all-digital, or just making sure day-to-day paperwork doesn’t get into the wrong hands, shredding services offer a secure and effective way to destroy your sensitive documents.

Shredding is useful for a wide variety of documents for a similarly diverse selection of businesses, given the laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act all mandating responsible management of data for businesses and organizations across healthcare, finance, consumer markets, and other industries.

Other documents that may posed privacy risks include employee records, documents that might leak proprietary company technologies, and other delicate paperwork. Great shredding companies handle clients’ confidential record with discretion and attention to detail in preserving the safety of the business, customers, employees, and technologies.

Many shredding services providers have no physical limitations on the volume of documents they can destroy; from a single box to truck-loads, your sensitive information is in good hands.

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While you can have pretty much any form of documentation destroyed by shredding services if you have the need or desire, there are many form of documentation you must have destroyed thoroughly and securely—courtesy of several forms of regulation intended to preserve the privacy and protect the identities of members of the public, businesses in industries including healthcare, finance, and consumer credit. These entities must all be careful about how they store and dispose of sensitive documents.

• Healthcare records : If you’re in healthcare, you’re no doubt quite familiar with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s many, many patient protections. One of those protections is, of course, a requirement that industry professionals thoroughly destroy discarded patient information

• Finance : Similar to the protections HIPPA mandates for the health industry, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, or GLBA, requires financial institutions such as banks to take steps to maintain the privacy of consumer data. This of course includes thorough destruction of discarded consumer documentation.

•  General business : The growing dangers of identity theft in the 21st century led to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act of 2003. Among other things, FACTA requires businesses to shred discarded customer information to deter identify theft.

These are far from being the only types of documents a business may have cause to shred; consumer data, proprietary research, employee records–you’ll want to shred all of these when discarding them. You can shred in bulk or on a schedule, and minor obstructions such as staples and paper clips don’t matter to modern tools.