Why You Need to keep on top of your Confidential Shredding

Running any kind of business or organisation will mean that your company will be generating an amount of confidential data on a regular basis.

When you think about it, your business and your employees will be constantly handling transactions or issuing contracts between your company and others, or between your company and your direct customers or business clients.

You can class a lot of the information that passes between you and other companies, customers and official governmental offices as sensitive information. This information will often include personal data or financial information about your customers or your business that you simply cannot afford to lose through a data breach or ID fraud.

Data Protection Legislation

According to the current Data Protection Act legislation, your company has a duty of care towards keeping safe all of the sensitive information that is generated during the course of your business. This includes the personal information of your own company employees as well as those of your customers or clients, business and trading partners.

So what do you do with all this accumulated sensitive information to keep your company fully compliant with current data protection laws and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands?

Firstly, you should look at having a confidential shredding system in place for your company employees to strictly follow.

You can do this by looking at the type of confidential information that your company generates and how you currently store this data. If you generate a lot of paper-based sensitive information then make sure that your paper copies are filed away in secure filing cabinets that are lockable.

Make sure that your employees understand the risks involved with the handling of sensitive data and ensure that they never leave any confidential documentation unattended on their work desks or any customer or client files are left out overnight and exposed to the risk of being stolen.

You should make it a priority to have written company policies about the safe handling of your company sensitive data and the secure disposal of spent confidential waste.

Confidential shredding secure wheelie bins and shredding sacks

It makes a lot of sense to have confidential secure wheelie bins installed in your company offices. This means that your staff can quickly and safely dispose of any confidential data without worry.

Restore Datashred has put a lot of thought into our confidential shredding services. We understand that you don't always want a large and unsightly secure wheelie bin sitting in your office taking up valuable floor space and looking really obvious.

Designed to suit any office environment, our stylish and secure cabinets incorporates a lock and slot, as well as a floor to prevent access to the contents inside.

This means that there is an extra layer of security in place to protect your company from any data breaches during the removal and disposal of your confidential waste.

Medical and healthcare industries

Dealing with the disposal of confidential patient information is incredibly important for hospitals, clinics, GP surgeries and healthcare practitioners.

You should have a set of very specific policies in place to cover the handling of sensitive patient information, including patient financial data, medical information and other personal details.

Once your patient information is no longer of use, it is imperative that you have a confidential shredding system in place for your archived patient files.

Protecting your company reputation

Keeping your customer or client personal data safe is a very heavy responsibility. As a company with a good profile and reputation, you cannot risk suffering from a data breach no matter the severity of the individual incident.

In the corporate world, your business reputation is paramount. Should you suffer a data breach or have the details of your 'next big product' stolen from right under your nose, you will be putting your company reputation on the line.

Research and development work

Your research and development department will be a particular target for unscrupulous information thieves. Whether you are worried or not about your direct competition and the risks they are prepared to take to steal valuable developmental product information from your company, it is worth making sure that new product blueprints, design alterations, testing results etc. don't get thrown away in your regular rubbish collection.

Many high-profile companies never recover from a serious data breach. They can lose the trust and respect of the other companies they deal with as well as their own customers or clients.

This is why you need to ensure that your company shreds its sensitive data on a regular basis to make sure any product blueprints or other sought after information doesn't make it into your regular waste collection and ends up in the hands of strangers – or your competition.

Maintaining customer confidence

When your company gains a new client or customer, they are entrusting you with their confidential information. They will expect you to do everything in your power to protect their information while you are using and storing it. They will be trusting you to dispose of their data carefully once it is not needed any longer.

Showing your customers or clients that you are a very trustworthy company and will be careful with their data can help to boost their trust in your company. Building trust between your company and your customers will make them more likely to return to buy from your business in the future.

You can be open and honest with your clients or customers by including information about the steps your company takes to protect its data. You can publish this on your website for your customers to read or include a printed information leaflet that can be packaged up and sent with your product with your customer order delivery.

Reassuring your employees

Like most big business employers, your company recruitment process may involve doing all sorts of background and security checks on your potential new employees.

No doubt you will be sourcing documentation such as written references, criminal background checks and any other information needed. However, you must always remember that no matter what information you gather about your prospective new employees, the information you gather about them is still legally theirs.

This means that you have a duty of care to protect all the personal information you gather on job candidates, and then once you have made your hiring decision, you will need to make sure this gathered information goes through a confidential shredding process to completely destroy the data.

When an employee leaves your company, you will also need to securely dispose of their personal information. This is especially important with regard to their financial information.

Protecting your business from unethical activities

Even though we are now living through a high-tech age where paper documentation is becoming less relied upon in the business world, almost all companies remain at risk of the illegal gathering of information for the purpose of criminal activities.

The stealing of personal data from company waste and recycling bins still goes on at a surprisingly high rate. Modern data criminals are no longer simply on the lookout for business financial information, but can also profit from selling on any personal data they find while sorting through exposed business waste bins.

When you think about how much confidential documentation is still being generated each day by businesses and organisations such as customer records, business documents, personal and financial information about employees and temporary staff, it is pretty scary to discover that a lot of information still gets discarded in the office waste paper bin.

It could be through an absent-minded mistake made by a member of staff while filling out a customer form where they simply throw the form into a bin where they made an error. Discarded forms, hand-scribbled notes and post-it notes that contain names, addresses and phone numbers are often thrown away without any thought in your regular waste instead of your confidential waste bin.

This is why it is important to make your staff aware that all their notes and forms should go into your secure confidential wheelie bins for secure shredding.

Professional confidential shredding services

More UK businesses are hiring professional confidential shredding services to help them remain compliant with their Data Protection Act responsibilities. Hiring experienced professionals such as Restore Datashred makes a lot of sense because you will not only be fulfilling your responsibilities to keep your sensitive company data safe, but you will also be more able to combat the problem of data breaches occurring.

There are two very effective steps that a company owner can do to protect themselves better:

1.      The first is to ensure the proper training of their staff regarding privacy and confidentiality issues to prevent them from becoming the source of a data security breach.

2.      The second is to implement a regular confidential shredding schedule using secure lockable cabinets for the safe collection of confidential data and then ensuring its disposal through a trusted professional confidential shredding service such as Restore Datashred.

We can help you with your confidential data that requires the destruction of either small or large amounts of sensitive information. It makes sense to set up a frequent schedule of secure disposal that doesn't allow the large build-up of confidential data.

You can discuss your confidential data disposal needs with us so that we can work out exactly what type of secure disposal you need, your collection and storage requirements and the frequency of the collection and destruction of your confidential data.

Conclude your audit trail

By using a professional confidential shredding service such as Restore Datashred, you will be complying with your Data Protection Act responsibilities. Once your confidential data has been destroyed you will be issued with a certificate of destruction.

Your certificate of destruction will be your legal proof that you properly disposed of your confidential data in full compliance with current Data Protection legislation.

Remember that Restore Datashred are here to help you with all of your confidential shredding needs including:

•  Onsite shredding using our mobile shredding vehicles
•  Offsite shredding at one of our secure data destruction depots
•  Hard drive and electronic media destruction

The safety and security of your confidential business data should not be taken lightly. The sensitive information that you use and store is a crucial part of your company's success.

Your company information is at risk of data breaches and identity theft if you don't handle it and dispose of it with the greatest of care. You can ensure the safe and proper destruction of your confidential data with the help offered by Restore Datashred.

Contact our team today

With our years of experience in the confidential data destruction industry, we are the first choice of many thousands of leading UK businesses and organisations. They put their trust in us to keep their sensitive information safe throughout the secure destruction process.

Our high-quality confidential shredding services can offer your company secure and confidential document shredding and data destruction that is very thorough and environmentally friendly.

Choosing Restore Datashred services provide security, peace of mind, and will help to enhance your business privacy and confidentiality status.

Do not hesitate to contact our friendly team at Restore Datashred to discuss your business needs. We are here to answer your questions and work with you to set up the best possible confidential data disposal routine.