The Safety Of Shredding Documents - Is The Information Really Secure
One of the primary concerns of companies interested in making the switch to digital
copies of their traditional paper documents involves the confidentiality of the information. What happens to the documents once they have been scanned? Is it possible for a nefarious individual to get a hold of these shredded documents and reassemble them in order to gain any of the knowledge that was supposed to be disposed of? In a word, no. It is virtually impossible to reassemble a shredded document. This is actually bad news for anyone who has inadvertently shredded a document that they were not done with.
Modern shredders do not just cut the paper into slices. They quite literally destroy the original document. Companies that have large amounts of documents that need to be scanned and converted into some type of digital form can trust that an outside vendor who specializes in just such a task can be trusted to handle the documents with the utmost respect for information privacy. Once the documents have been scanned, they can be destroyed without any worry of the information falling into the wrong hands or that an individual's privacy may somehow be compromised. In fact, a digital copy is actually much safer and more secure than a paper version.
There were attempts in the past to develop some type of software that can scan shredded documents and then reassemble the information. None of these attempts have ever produced significant results of any kind other than failure. While it may have been possible to reassemble a document that was shredded using one of the first machines on the market, shredders used by companies that specialize in scanning documents and then destroying them are designed to make the shredded documents useless to criminals. Once these documents have been shredded, you can rest assured that the information that they once held is gone forever.
The other side of this equation rests in the digital copy. A digital copy of a document can be encrypted and password protected making it impossible to access by an unauthorized individual. It is actually much easier to break in to a filing cabinet than it is to hack into an encrypted external drive for a password protected file. You can trust that the companies that have made this their specialty have built their reputation on treating every piece of information as though it was the most important. Their ability to stay in business depends on your information being secure and safe.