It is sometimes easy to assume that safeguarding your business against data breaches can be done solely through cybersecurity. Yes, businesses need firewalls, encryption, and secure networks. These are solutions that protect businesses. Unfortunately, your security is incomplete if your physical data is exposed. And this is something that many companies overlook. Even with businesses going paperless, they still generate and store printed records containing sensitive information. These printed records need to be shredded to ensure zero data breach. This is where a NAID-certified destruction company can help you. Document shredding by a reputable, certified company is a powerful, effective data protection solution. If you want to know how document shredding protects your business from data breaches, this post explores it.
How Document Shredding Protects Your Business From Data Breaches
Despite today’s technological advancements, businesses continue to rely on paper for contracts, receipts, employee data, client files, and internal communications. These documents usually contain various data, which may be business, personal, or financial in nature, that hackers and identity thieves can exploit.
Why Physical Documents Still Pose a Risk
One of the oldest and still most effective ways of stealing information is dumpster diving. When documents are placed in public waste, anyone can retrieve them. From there, fraudsters can steal sensitive data, which can be used for identity theft, corporate espionage, or financial fraud. This shows how essential shedding is for businesses and even for personal purposes.
Document Shredding Prevents Data Breaches
Eliminates Recoverable Information
The goal of document shredding is to ensure that documents are destroyed beyond recognition. Regardless of the type of cut you choose, whether it is cross-cut, micro cut, or industrial shredding, you can be assured that your sensitive documents are shredded into tiny, unreconstructible pieces. This way, criminals will not be able to retrieve, reassemble, and exploit your discarded documents.
Maintains Compliance with Privacy Regulations
Legal regulations require businesses to safeguard sensitive data, be it physical or digital records. Non-compliance can lead to heavy penalties, legal liabilities, and even damage to the company’s image and reputation.
Partnering with a certified shredding provider helps your business meet regulatory standards for proper disposal of confidential information. Many shredding companies even offer proof that records were safely destroyed by providing businesses with a Certificate of Destruction.
Protects Customer Trust
Clients trust you with their personal information. A single data breach can break this trust, ruin the client relationship you worked hard to build, and destroy the credibility of your brand and company. Partnering with a certified shredding provider ensures that customer data is handled safely and securely. It is an assurance to your clients that their data is handled with integrity and utmost security. This will result in continued patronage and brand loyalty.
Reduces Insider Threats
Unfortunately, data breaches do not always come from external attackers. Sometimes these breaches are caused by people within the company, whether due to negligence or intentional misconduct. Documents left on desks, filed in unlocked cabinets, or thrown into open trash bins are easy targets.
To reduce the potential for internal leaks and accidental exposure, a company-wide secure shredding policy should be followed regularly and consistently. This will minimize the risk of unauthorized access.
Safeguards Intellectual Property
Aside from customer and employee information, printed documents include proprietary data such as:
- product designs and prototypes
- business strategies
- pricing structures
- vendor contracts
These documents, if not appropriately discarded and safely, can go into the wrong hands and give competitors an unfair advantage or compromise your position in the market. Your intellectual property needs to be protected as carefully as your digital assets, and you can do so by regularly having it shredded by a NAID-certified destruction company.
Strengthen Your Security with Proper Document Disposal
Physical data can easily be compromised and stolen if not appropriately handled. Protect your company from expensive lawsuits and damaged reputation by destroying sensitive information. Call us today to find out more about our document shredding and paper shredding services.
