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Understanding the risks, navigating the law, and avoiding data security mistakes are key to safeguarding your sensitive information. Taking the appropriate steps to keep that confidential data secure is the practical back-up you need.
Understand the risks
Breaches, fines, client confidentiality, reputational damage and, for public and private businesses, a hit to your bottom line; these risks all have the potential for a huge knock-on effect.
Know the law
GDPR UK data protection legislation is minutely concerned with how we all handle personal and sensitive data. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has full details of the legal clauses but, in general, as a responsible and reputable business, why would you not be taking all steps to keep your employees, clients and, indeed, your organisation’s trade secrets safe and protected to the end of their useful or statutory life?
The WEEE Directive covers sustainability legislation governing the disposal of e-waste. Digital media and hard drives are e-waste, as they contain plastics, metals and potential contaminants. Do you have company ESG commitments to uphold? Ensuring you safeguard the eventual disposal outcome of all your digital media is important.
Avoid data security errors
Rooky errors in disposing of board meeting minutes in the standard recycling stream; leaving documents out on desks; even Post-It notes containing confidential phone numbers or messages should all be handled with care.
Our 7-point plan to enhance your office (and home office) data security
NB: always bear in mind that information is on paper and digital media, including hard drives, memory sticks, storage tapes, and so on.
Instigate a retention and disposal policy
The cornerstone of your business’ information and records management, knowing which documents must be kept for a statutory period – some require decades ‘on the record’ – and which must be disposed of more quickly, while in accordance with data protection legislation, is of key importance to business legitimacy.
Ensure systems, processes and protocols are in place to back your policy
These can include digital file sharing protocols, document audit trails, automated document flagging, and disposal methods appropriate to the level of protection your data requires.
Train your employees and colleagues
These are the guys implementing your data protection policies, so it makes sense to educate and gain regular feedback on the functionality and efficacy of any systems you have in place.
Have a clear desk policy
There are multiple benefits to insisting on clear desks, which include: great impression management for any visitors to your office; protection from any light-fingered or nosy ‘visitors’; smooth-running systems, and quick feedback on any lumps and bumps in those systems.
Restrict access levels
Two-step authentication, password protocols or a simple strict key policy for storage rooms are as effective as you want to make them and keep access at a ‘need-to-know’ level.
Set up robust storage systems
Security is a major word in the vocabulary of any professional business, no matter what the size, and we have already touched on some of the areas this term covers. If you store paper documents and digital media on site, locks, secure segregated bins, restricted access and automated records management software are tools in your safeguarding kit. If you use off-site secure storage facilities, because of space and overall management concerns, a prerequisite of any professional firm you choose to work with is that you should be able to access your data 24/7, and have complete trust in their security and maintenance of both audit software and the conditions your documents are kept in.
Use an accredited shredding services provider
If you have followed our plan to this stage, it would be a shame not to dispose of your carefully guarded data in the right way, preserving your security efforts to the very end. We suggest that the only way to guarantee this continuous level of protection is by using a professional secure shredding company, like Restore Datashred.
How Restore Datashred is your ultimate safeguarding partner
We securely shred paper documents, including CVs and letters, board meeting minutes, manufacturing formulae, customer contact details, medical records and patient data, R&D reports, M&A details. We reduce all of it into tiny fragments in our huge shredders, bale the fragments and send them to be recycled into new paper products.
The secure document shredding process is managed by security-checked operatives and tracked from end-to-end, and we provide you with a certificate of destruction after each transaction. It’s simple, effective, and secure, giving you full compliance with legislation, and peace of mind.
We also shred digital media, covering disks, hard drives – both HDD and SDD – USB sticks, CDs, DVDs and magnetic storage tapes. If you no longer need the media, shredding is one of the most secure methods of data destruction. Once they are reduced to 4mm fragments, data, disk and all are unrecoverable.
Hard drive destruction with Restore Datashred has an additional benefit over and above the legislative compliance and peace of mind you would expect from our secure processes. Because we are a major recycling business, our commitment is to send nothing to landfill, so the plastics and metals from destroyed digital media are sent for recycling and re-use, not to be buried in the ground.
Why work with Restore Datashred?
We are a customer-focused business, always striving to give you a five-star service, knowing that we are solidly backed by the international business and security accreditations we have worked hard to achieve and maintain, as well as memberships, including leaderships, of key security industry associations.
Find out more
Find out more about how partnering with Restore Datashred will keep your confidential data organised, managed and safeguarded, from your office to our shredding blades, by calling our knowledgeable customer service team on 0800 376 4422.