7 Ways In-House Document Shredders Leave Your Company’s Data Vulnerable

Data protection should be one of the top priorities of your company. Inadequate data protection not only leaves your company vulnerable, but any breach in security can hurt your company’s reputation drastically and cause much more serious issues. Shredding sensitive documents seems like a good first line of defense, but sometimes an in-house shredder isn’t enough to handle the job, and can leave the data just as vulnerable.

1. Most Shredders Marketed to Offices Aren’t Enough

Many shredders that you’ll buy from office suppliers aren’t enough to get the job done in a way that ensures data protection. They’ll turn your paper documents into long strips, but someone intent on stealing customer data can piece long strips together like a puzzle, reforming documents that are readable and provide a wealth of sensitive information.

2. Threats Can Come From the Inside

Unhappy, disgruntled, and vengeful employees will have access to your shredding if you keep the process in house. Although we’d all like to believe that this wouldn’t be a problem in most office cultures, employees who are tasked with doing the shredding of sensitive documents often don’t have background checks, and where there’s uncertainty, there’s risk.

3. No Lock on the Shredder

Most office shredders aren’t locked, and when the shredder is full, the waste is often thrown out in the regular trash or recycling. Even though the documents have been shredded, no locks on the shredder can leave your data vulnerable.

4. Data Protection Isn’t Documented

Most office shredding isn’t done with a chain of command, witnesses, and documentation. Because of this, relying on in office shredding means that security may not be complete.

5. In House Shredders May Not Be Reliable

Shredders may break down, overheat, or jam. When this happens, not only are they a fire hazard, but this means that they won’t be used while they aren’t functional, leading to a backup of sensitive paperwork.

6. Delay in Shredding

Shredding may build up until whoever in the office has been assigned to the task has time in their schedule. Without a regular schedule for shredding, sensitive paperwork can pile up in stacks or boxes, leaving that data unprotected and vulnerable to threats.

7. Office Shredders Can Typically Only Handle Paperwork

Although most people think of shredding as a paper task, there are other data sources that may require destruction as well, such as hard drives.

When it comes to protecting your company’s data, outsourcing shredding to the professionals is often well worth the investment. These companies have the staff, resources, and facilities for destruction of sensitive information in a thorough and efficient manner. AccuShred is an industry leader in this area. Contact us today for more information about our data protection services.