DIY Shredding vs. Professional Shredding
January 14, 2019
by The Shred Truck
Every business must have a plan for expired documents. It comes down to two options: you can either shred in-house or outsource your document destruction to a shredding services company. In this blog, we discuss the differences between in-house shredding and professional shredding.
Cost
It’s easy to overlook the costs associated with in-house shredding. Consumer-grade office shredders are inexpensive. Plus, you already pay your employees, so why not have them shred documents? But shredding documents with a store-bought machine is unreliable, time consuming, and not an efficient use of employee time. Cheap office shredders break easily and must be replaced often. Plus, shredding a file involves multiple steps, including:
- Removing staples and paperclips from documents
- Separating files into easy-to-shred portions
- Emptying the shredding receptacle
This doesn’t include troubleshooting unexpected maintenance problems and fixing paper jams. Every minute spent shredding means one minute less spent on revenue generation.
Professional shredding is more efficient. A mobile shredding truck destroys hundreds of pounds of paper in a fraction of the time of an office shredder. And when your documents are professionally destroyed, your employees can focus on core tasks and business growth.
Compliance
Several federal laws, including HIPAA, FACTA, and GLBA, require destruction of personally identifiable (PII) and protected health information (PHI). As a result, businesses and organizations must provide proof of final disposition of paper records.
DIY shredding isn’t verifiable; it’s impossible to tell when, how, or if an employee has destroyed a document. Professional shredding offers documented proof of the destruction process. Your paper records are destroyed on-site at your business. Afterward, you receive a Certificate of Destruction, which serves as proof of your company’s compliance with federal privacy regulations.
Security
Security is one of the biggest differences between DIY shredding and professional shredding. Since shredding with an office shredder is inefficient and unreliable, employees often toss confidential documents in trash cans or recycling bins. These mistakes increase identity theft and business fraud risks.
Professional shredding eliminates negligent document disposal practices that lead to data breaches. Your provider will place locked, bar-coded collection containers in high-traffic areas throughout your office. This allows your employees to purge confidential documents securely and in a matter of seconds. Your shredding and destruction provider empties the contents of the containers for professional, on-site mobile document destruction.
As you can see, professional shredding enhances privacy protection, efficiency and compliance for your business.
The Shred Truck™ provides NAID AAA Certified, mobile, on-site paper shredding and hard drive destruction services in and around St. Louis, Missouri. For more information, please call us at 314-729-9200 or complete the form on this page.