Shredding services are a popular and necessary service that protects your sensitive information from identity thieves. Whether cleaning out your office or looking for ongoing shredding services, this guide will help you find the best option to suit your needs.
Budget-friendly shredders found in offices send paper through in long strips, which are still easy for savvy thieves to piece together. Instead, choose a company with high standards of safety and security.
Know What You Want to Shred
Knowing what documents to shred and when is crucial for protecting your personal information and preventing identity theft. Identity thieves often search through trash cans for personal information that can be used to commit fraud, such as stealing credit card numbers or filing fraudulent tax returns. Therefore, a reliable shredding service like Shred Monster is important to ensure your sensitive documents are securely destroyed.
For this reason, a good rule of thumb is to shred any documents that contain sensitive information as soon as they are no longer needed. It includes things like credit card statements, utility bills, receipts (except those showing the last digits of your card number), family photos, and old hard drives.
Shredded paper can be repurposed for lining hamster cages, composting, gift wrapping, and packing.
Get a Quote
Many people use personal shredders for their shredding needs, but these machines can have issues like jamming, inability to handle staples or paper clips, overheating, and short lifespans. Professional shredding services offer a more reliable option that is less expensive than purchasing and maintaining your shredder.
Getting a quote is the first step to hiring an experienced and reliable shredding company. Your selections will vary depending on where you live, the size of your project and the type of service you choose. A national provider may charge more than one that is local. Mobile or offsite shredding services will factor their travel costs into your quote. They bring their shredding trucks to you and shred your documents while you watch.
Schedule an Appointment
If you’re looking for an easy way to destroy old documents in large quantities, you can use a service that picks up your bins and shreds them offsite. It saves you the time and money to shred or take them to a recycling center.
You can also attend a local shredding event sponsored by your community or a nearby business. These events occur in a public, easy-to-access location on a set date and time. The community comes together to get their papers shredded and raise awareness of information security.
Make sure you remove metal clips, fasteners, binders, and hardcovers from your papers before bringing them to a shred event. Otherwise, your report will be turned away. This is a great option for residents who want to clean out their homes or businesses and keep sensitive information safe.
Pick Up Your Bins
When choosing a shredding service, asking about their security protocols is important. Look for a company that follows NAID guidelines uses tamper-proof containers, and has background-checked employees. They should also use cross-cut shredding methods, which are more secure than strip-cut.
Shredding services collect the documents that you want destroyed and place them in locked collection bins. The bins are loaded onto a truck and taken to a secure shredding facility.
Shred services are ideal for large businesses with a lot of paper that must be shredded regularly. They can schedule weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly shredding services. You can also request a one-time shredding service, called a purge shred, where they come and destroy your documents just once.
Get a Certificate of Destruction
Getting rid of old documents and equipment is one of the most important parts of any data protection program. Proper disposal of confidential materials reduces the likelihood of information theft, minimizes a business’s liabilities should a breach occur, and makes compliance with data protection laws easier.
When you work with a professional shredding service, they should provide you with a certificate of destruction for every project they complete. This document offers detailed proof that your sensitive materials were destroyed properly.
To get a certificate of destruction, contact your local shredding company to request service. They will provide a bin for you to drop off your materials, then securely shred them on-site with security cameras to ensure total privacy.
