Identity Theft Articles

Running a business that involves keeping your clients’ most sensitive information on file is never a simple task. There are a variety of privacy concerns to consider, in addition to setting the clients’ minds at ease. When it comes to document destruction and shredding services, the best way to ensure simplicity and quality is to hire an outside firm to shred your sensitive papers on-site or off-site - and for many professionals, such as lawyers, physicians and accountants, the easiest and most efficient method happens to be the method required by federal law.

Legislation such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Gramm-Leach Bliley Financial Modernization Act dictate the terms under which doctors, lawyers and accountants must engage in document destruction, and what kinds of shredding services firms they may employ to do so. But even within the rules set by those laws, there is a wide range of easy ways to shred old documents.

Shredding Paper Off-Site

One easy way to get rid of old papers and documents is to have them carted away by a professional document destruction firm and shredded at a secure facility.

Generally this is the best plan for large volumes of paper - say, more than 100 boxes of documents. A shredding project of this magnitude is usually best performed off-site, and the best document shredding firms will use machines that shred about 5,000 pounds of paper every hour.

When hiring a document shredding firm, be sure to ask whether it’s necessary for you to prepare the documents for destruction - and if it is, keep looking. The most efficient way to eliminate old documents and expired paperwork is to simply hand them over to the professionals in charge of shredding. Spending hours removing every paper clip, rubber band and staple isn’t a good use of your company’s time, so make sure the shredding-and-bailing unit your document destruction firm uses is a powerful one.

Scheduled Pickup and Destruction

If your firm generates a substantial amount of paperwork every week, it might be a good idea to hire a document destruction company that makes regular pickups. Many of the best shredding services in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey will provide disposal bins, complete with lock and key. Schedule a regular pickup time, and make sure to have one or two employees serve as a regular liaison to the document destruction firm’s representatives. Your clients’ privacy will be worth it.

Mobile Document Shredding

You can always tell whether a document shredding company is of the highest quality by the shredding devices it uses. A company that uses a mobile document shredding unit is the best available, since that company’s employees can bring their document destruction capabilities with them wherever they go. If you’re a small agricultural company that stores its paperwork in an old barn, a mobile document shredding unit can go there. If your old documents are in an ancient warehouse on the outskirts of town, a mobile document shredding unit can go there.

These devices are impressive: Huge, self-contained machines that generate their own electrical power and devour everything they’re fed, from paper clips to file folders to rubber bands. If you’ve got what looks like a massive amount of old paperwork, files and documents, mobile document shredding may be the best way to go.