All businesses need shredding services, but not all businesses use their shredding services in the same ways. A chain grocery store, a doctor’s office and a small accounting firm are all going to need different things from their shredding company. Having the flexibility to tailor your business’s shredding services to your specific needs lets you safeguard your sensitive data without paying for things you don’t need. That’s true no matter what your business does—but there are certain industries where having flexible shredding services may be particularly important.  How Can Different Indus ..read more

In a time when just about everything seems to be stored in the cloud, physical media can seem downright quaint. Things like CDs and tapes used to be part of how everyone did business. Today, many businesses probably don’t even own any equipment that could play an audio tape. But that doesn’t mean your old physical media is actually obsolete. Media shredding is just as important a part of your data destruction policy as paper shredding.  Media Shredding and the Link to Data Security From a business owner’s perspective, data security is probably the top reason why shredding hard drives, CDs ..read more

If your business makes or sells physical products, you can’t afford to neglect the Consumer Product Safety Act.  Manufacturers, importers and retailers have obligations under the law. It’s been on the books for more than 50 years, but many business owners are probably unclear about exactly what the law requires of them. Penalties for violations can be huge, to say nothing of the consequences that could follow from making or selling a product that harms a customer. Familiarize yourself with what the Consumer Product Safety Act requires in terms of safety standards and destruction of defect ..read more

Digital documents have made a lot of business processes easier than they used to be back when everything was done on paper. Cloud-based systems have allowed businesses to access data and tools from anywhere, at any time. Tech advancements have changed the way we create and store information—but they shouldn’t change everything about the way your business approaches data security. Even if your business primarily works with digital documents and prints out paper versions rarely, your physical data security and document shredding protocols are as important as ever.  Document Shredding is Sti ..read more

Your business might reap multiple benefits from organizing a shredding event. First, it’s a good opportunity to clean out your facilities and offices so you can get rid of obsolete materials, hard drives and files in a secure way, creating more storage space. Businesses also host shredding events that are open to the public or their customers as a way to boost name recognition, attract new customers and just generally create some positive attention for themselves. A lot of people have bags or boxes of old shreddable documents sitting around, but don’t have a good way to securely dispose of the ..read more

Shredding important documents is practically muscle memory for business owners and employees at this point. Unless someone is careless or uneducated about data security risks, everyone in your organization is probably good about putting sensitive documents into locked containers for secure shredding rather than in open recycling bins or trash cans. From small offices to huge grocery stores and warehouses, it’s standard for businesses to have well-established procedures for document shredding.   What about materials shredding? It’s a fundamental part of a good data security plan, but ..read more

Imagine the worst-case scenario happens and your business experiences a serious data breach. Let’s say after upgrading your company’s computers, you failed to destroy some obsolete hard drives properly, and a malicious outsider targeted those drives to use the data to steal sensitive information. Not only would your own financial data be exposed, but private or financial data belonging to your employees and clients could be involved too.  In the aftermath of a data breach, your business would have to answer some tough questions—including “What’s our liability here?” That answer could help ..read more

How many cell phones have you gone through in your lifetime? Most of us have probably lost track at this point. You might have one or two old phones gathering dust in a drawer at home or in your office right now. Every upgrade brings up the question – what’s the best way to dispose of old phones? Cell phone recycling is definitely the responsible choice. But putting your phone in the recycling bin doesn’t seem right (and it’s not), and returning your old phone to the manufacturer or a recycling program might feel risky. There are two basic concerns when disposing of old cell phones. First: dat ..read more

We’ve talked before about healthcare data breaches and why timely document shredding is so essential for protecting patient data. Healthcare entities risk HIPAA violations and could expose patients’ private medical and/or financial information to outsiders with delayed data destruction. It’s easy to see how a data breach could affect patient privacy, considering healthcare records contain things like Social Security numbers and financial information. What might be less obvious is the very real link between data breaches and patient health.  There are several ways that a healthcare entity ..read more

If your business is subject to the FTC Safeguards Rule, but you haven’t yet become compliant under the newest requirements, there’s still time—but not much. The compliance deadline for some of the Rule’s provisions is currently set to be June 9, 2023, after which steep penalties may be issued for covered businesses that don’t put the right protections in place. Here’s what you need to know about the FTC Safeguards Rule, who it covers and what it says about data destruction.    What is the FTC Safeguards Rule?  In the simplest terms, the FTC Safeguards Rule (aka 16 CFR Part 314 ..read more