How Secure Shredding Services Work?

Answer 1

In order to prevent identity theft and protect privacy, the federal government enacted the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, or FACTA, to address the proper disposal of consumer information. Every company that operates within the United States is now affected by this legislation and must abide by secure disposal, which usually involves a shredding service, of any papers containing consumer information used for business purposes.

The items to be destroyed or shredded include items such as:

• medical records
• financial documents
• tax documents

As companies were faced with having to support reasonable measures to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive consumer information including:

• burning, pulverizing, or shredding of sensitive documents, or
• erasure and destruction of electronic records

Many companies now rely on secure shredding services engagements to handle business information destruction. These shredding services are often implemented instead of installing and maintaining document shredders in offices, medical facilities, tax handling services, and financial institutions in an effort to ensure compliance with regulations and reduce the risk of lawsuits.

Some of the reasons for employing a document shredding service include the following:

• It's an ethical business practice that ensures a business has professional help and handling of document destruction.
• It's easy, cost-effective and they have a much higher shredding capacity than in-house shredding machines.
• It's supporting green environmental efforts because most shredding companies also support recycling the materials after shredding is completed.
• It gives a company a competitive edge by eliminating the risk of exposure to competitors, and ensures that the organization and destruction of the paper documents are efficiently handled without additional effort or employee involvement.
• It reduced legal risk associated with human error that can occur and cause potential client or customer harm.