It is common or a company to deal with a lot of personal and confidential information in order to assist their customers. Sometimes it is simple information like their name and address and other times it is going to be more complex, such as credit card information or social security cards. But as a business, it is important to follow the right procedures to get rid of this confidential information in order to protect your customers.
There are many negative effects that can come to your business if there happens to be a breach in privacy with this confidential information. These can include:
Fines: companies that are in charge of this confidential information are bound legally to protect that information. If the company doesn’t do this, it is going to lead to fines and penalties. Depending on how much damage is done, these fees and penalties could end up getting to millions of dollars, which can really hurt a company.
Criminal penalties: there are also some different degrees of consequences when you have a data breach. Sometimes this is going to depend on the type of breach that happens, but the size and how severe it is can also come into affect for your penalties. The penalties for having one of these data breaches can range from 1 to 10 years in prison and it often has a huge fine attached as well.
Lawsuits: since your business is legally required to keep some information private, a minor infringement can have some major consequences as well. Even just one stray file can bring about a lawsuit. This may not bring about an end to your company, but when others hear about it, this becomes negative publicity on your company and may make your current customers feel like there is now a lack of trust.
Public image: most companies spend a lot of time to build a trustworthy and respectable reputation among their customers and their community. A privacy breach of any amount, whether it is with all the customers or just one or two, can start to tarnish your reputation and can harm you for a long time in the future.
In order to avoid some of these negative issues that come up, you need to make sure that you are handling and even disposing of any confidential information that you have in the proper manner. If you don’t, it is likely to lead to a lot of the consequences from above for your company.
One of the best things that you can do in order to protect this confidential information is to find a good and secure data destruction company. This company will be able to take some of the work for you away and will ensure that any of your sensitive documents will be discarded in a manner that is safe as well as suitable so you never end up with a data breach. The best part is, this isn’t going to require a lot of extra work on your part.