Most business owners and managers understand why they should be shredding their old confidential documents.
Protecting your customer and supplier data and the confidentiality of your business is vital.
The problem is, there are other things you should also consider shredding if you want to protect your brand and make your data protection regime truly effective.
What should you be shredding?
- ALL of your old documents which contain any information deemed confidential personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). That includes anything with names, addresses, and email addresses, national insurance numbers, medical records, and records of IP addresses. The penalties for failing to protect this data can be severe – up to 4% of worldwide annual turnover or two million euros, whichever is higher, in the most serious cases.
- Your old computer hard drives which are full of details which could be used against your business or could fall into the wrong hands. Deleting files won’t prevent someone clever from finding them on your hard drive somewhere. GDPR also says that IP addresses are now included on the list of confidential personal information, so you must protect the IP addresses on your laptop or PC hard drives. Shredding is the best option as it destroys the hard drive and the recovered metal is then recycled.
- Your old removable media from phone SIM cards to USB sticks, CD-ROMs to digital phone cards. Most of us work on the go or send documents via our mobile phone these days. Keeping track of your old removable media is a key part of complying with GDPR. Make sure they’re shredded.
- Branded items with an old brand on them. You’ve spent good money creating your new brand, so why would you want to undermine it by having the old branded items in circulation? Your new brand may be aimed at a new customer base, more professional, or more modern. Items in this category include business cards, headed paper, old marketing materials such as flyers and brochures, and old signage.
- Old uniforms should be shredded to ensure the wrong people don’t get their hands on them, post as your staff and defraud your clients. This is particularly important for businesses in hospitality, the care sector, health and beauty, and security. Shredding old uniforms also helps to ensure your staff maintain a smart, professional appearance.
- Counterfeit or faulty goods must be taken out of circulation to protect your brand. Shred them to ensure they don’t leak back into your supply chain.
- Prototypes which need to be kept confidential should be shredded to prevent them falling into your competitors’ hands.
What are the other benefits of shredding?
You can shred onsite at your premises or offsite at a secure facility – excellent for businesses with sensitive material.
Your green credentials get a boost. We recycle as much of your shredded material as possible, including metals, paper, and card. This helps reduce the amount of resources which need to be grown and cut down (trees for paper) or mined (metals) and makes your business more sustainable.
Why choose On Time Shred?
- You get a flexible service tailored to your business needs – from one-off shreds to weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or quarterly shredding.
- We operate to BSI standards for quality, environmental protection, health and safety, information security and destruction.
- We’re ICO accredited and our staff are vetted to BS-7858 and have CRB checks.
- Our vehicles have GPS tracking and our secure shredding sites have 24-hour CCTV.
