subject: Top Ten Reasons To Shred Paper [print this page] Most companies that utilize document shredding can give a myriad of reasons why they do. Below, we've gathered the top ten.
1. When you do background or credit checks on your employees, the law requires you to shred their documents that contain any of that information in order to protect their privacy. The best way to do this is to hire a confidential shredding service that destroys all relevant documents after a round of hiring.
2. When you are part of a company that deals in research and development or creating new products, you need to take every effort possible to keep your companies information secret. Shredding documents help keeps new products secret until they are supposed to be released.
3. Storage space can be one of the largest wasted and unnecessary costs a company can face. By shredding instead of storing, you can save a great deal of money.
4. Leaking of company secrets to the competition has lead to the downfall of more than one large or important organization. Shredding documents is considered just common sense in protection against corporate espionage.
5. Privacy laws require that many documents which contain private information which belongs to your clients or customers be destroyed. Adhering to the law is always the first goal of document shredding.
6. Corporate espionage does not only cover the secrets of development within your company, but knowledge of another company's finances can also be extremely valuable information for a competitor. Shredding helps keep financial information within the company.
7. Many clients and customers in certain industries are going to require you to sign a non disclosure agreement of some kind before they will agree to do business with you. Many times, the terms of these types of agreements will include provisions that are going to require you to shred documents on a regular schedule.
8. When you work in the medical industry in any way, HIPPA requires you by law to destroy any patient documents which might contain private information, banking information, or insurance details about the patient.
9. Identity theft is a crime that is still growing, even with the security measures now taken against it. Corporate identity theft is also on the rise, but by shredding your documents you take one of the important steps to protect your company against this new type of crime.
10. You can actually use your shredding policy as a means to entice more clients to you company. Many people are comforted by knowing that the appropriate steps have been taken to be sure that their information will remain private.
