On Site Shredding Vs Off Site Shredding
As a business operating in the UK, there are two options for you to shred all your private documentation: On site shredding and Off site shredding. Off site shredding involves carrying all your documentation in trucks under lock and key to a secure site for destroying them. On site shredding otherwise known as mobile shredding is when a truck carrying a large industry sized shredder comes to your facility to destroy all your paperwork. Out of these two choices, on site shredding tends to be the most preferred option.
Regular On Site Shredding
With on site shredding, you can schedule the operation to happen at regular intervals. Professional on site shredding companies collect daily, weekly, monthly or at any intervals that suit you. When you perform this activity at regular intervals, you ensure that there is no big backlog of papers to be shredded.
Mobile Shredding Compliance
Using mobile shredding gives you the convenience of time. You can schedule the operation to be performed at a convenient time with preferred intervals. In between this sensitive activity when the data is vulnerable to be stolen, you can store your papers in secure storages like veneered lockable consoles, wheelie bins or sacks; thus preventing any data theft and ensuring that you don’t violate your data security policy at any time. The great thing is that the chain of custody is never broken as everything happens at your own site.
Security made easy
Since you can oversee the entire process, you can make sure that no data protection laws are breached during the actual shredding. Although there will be many people involved, it is easier to control access and ensure data security as the whole process happens at your facility. You can be in total control and make sure that all the information that is required to be shredded is actually destroyed. When this activity takes place in front of you, your sense of confidence in the safety of your data increases. When you send your data off site, you are putting your business at risk of breaching the Data Protection Act 1998 like the London Borough of Barnet that paid a penalty of £70,000 to Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in 2012 for having lost sensitive information.
Time is money
Time is the most precious resource of all for any business. On site shredding saves a lot of time for all the resources involved. Since the process happens at your facility, you can plan to have all the stakeholders available to oversee the operation or to take important decisions on the spot. Since all these happen without delays, a lot of time can be saved. Since everything happens on site, you can plan better for the availability of your resources. Also, since you get the auditable certificate of destruction immediately after every shred, you don’t have to waste time in chasing the vendors for the certificate.
Businesses are mandated by law under UK legislation to ensure that all confidential materials are shredded in accordance with the regulations. According to this law, organizations have a legal duty to store securely all private documents that is no longer required and destroy it after. Data security policy of your business should consider on site shredding as one of its critical components. If not, your business will become vulnerable to fraud that may result in irreversible damage to your reputation and diminished trust in your business.