Identity theft is one of the most difficult things to overcome, and just one more thing you need to protect yourself, your company, and your employees from in the digital world. Just one breach of personal information for any company in Boston can expose your company to liabilities, kill your reputation, and put your customers at risk.
What is Identity Theft?
Identity theft is when someone uses personal information to create fraudulent accounts, loans, and to purchase items from an unassuming person. Identity thieves use information that can be used independently or with other information to identify or contact an individual and use their identity to buy anything from Red Sox tickets to theater tickets.
Governments and organizations are required by law to do their best to attempt to protect individuals from identity theft. To do this, they have to identify and protect certain pieces of data universally known as Personally Identifiable Information, or PII. Here are just a few examples of PII, and what identity thieves can use to compromise anyone’s identity:
- Full name (if it’s not a common name i.e. John Smith)
- Home address
- Email address
- Driver’s license number
- Fingerprints/Face Recognition
- Handwriting
- Credit card numbers
- Date of birth
- Telephone number
- Your online information (login name, screen name, nickname, or handle)
Just a few data points can open up your life (and your credit score) to someone who will use it to run rampant, leaving you with a mess that takes years to clean up.
There’s many ways that you could compromise your company could accidentally leak PII- one of the most common of these is when documents that were not disposed of properly get into the wrong hands.
That’s where having a document management and document destruction plan will save you (and your customers) headaches. The most important aspect of these plans is to be sure all documents that could contain personal information are shredded properly.
Shred Your Documents Securely and Regularly
Documents that have personal, financial, or sensitive business information usually have to be retained for a set period of time. Then, once they’ve passed their useful life, they need to be destroyed securely and properly.
Implementing a shredding policy where certain documents are destroyed can be effective- it helps relieve your company of liability, and frees up office space as well.
Protect Your Identity by Shredding Your Documents
There’s several different shredding services that can protect your company from documents not being shredded properly, just simply thrown away without being shredded, or accidentally (or purposefully) misplaced: mobile shredding and offsite shredding.
Here’s a quick definition of each, and some of the best reasons to use them.
Mobile or Onsite Shredding
Mobile or Onsite Shredding is where a secure Boston shredding company provides secure, locked bins to your office. Your employees then deposit any documents or files that you need to shred.
When you’re ready to have your documents shredded, your shredding partner will schedule a time for a mobile shredding truck to come out to your office anywhere in Boston to shred your documents at your location. Onsite shredding gives you more flexibility and relieves you from moving heavy boxes of documents.
How Mobile Shredding Can Help Your Company
You can watch them shred your documents onsite
Making sure that your documents don’t leave the premises intact is a high priority for any company that regularly shreds sensitive information. Not only do you see your files being transported to the truck in locked bins- you see them being shredded as well. There is no physical contact between the shredding contractor and your documents at any time, which helps make sure your document security is intact.
You can easily schedule regular shredding jobs
Shredding documents once or twice a year has its advantages, but it’s a good idea to shred your documents regularly to prevent legal liability and data breaches. A mobile shredding service can schedule ongoing pickups to prevent the buildup of unsecured information and eliminate the chance of a low-tech hack.
You have items to shred that can be exchanged for cash
Anything that can be exchanged for cash, also known as negotiable instruments, should be destroyed onsite. That way you can ensure that coupons, unused or uncirculated checks, certificates, and other items never leave your location and used fraudulently.
Offsite Document Shredding
Offsite Document Shredding is similar to mobile shredding- but instead of shredding them onsite, a professional shredding company picks up your documents in locked bins and transports them to be shredded in a secure facility somewhere in Boston.
This service minimizes the risk of a data breach, a serious security issue, or the chance of an employee theft that can compromise your business. Since your documents are co-mingled with thousands of other documents, you further decrease your chance of a breach. Document shredding companies take significant steps to ensure that your information is protected.
Offsite shredding also eliminates the cost of having an actual shredding truck come out to your location, and is normally ideal for companies with a large amount of documents to shred. Because if this, you could end up saving $1 to $2 per box depending on location and provider.
Which Shredding Service is Best for Me?
Either mobile shredding or offsite shredding will give you a secure, reliable way to dispose of your documents and minimizes the chance that your company will be a victim of corporate espionage, identity theft, or fraud.
No matter which service you choose, you’re going to have a secure, easy-to-manage way to shred your documents no matter where you are in Boston.
To get Free, No-Obligation Quotes on Mobile or Offsite Shredding in the New England area today, fill out on this page, or give us a call at
(617) 517-3036.