Gilmore Blog https://www.gilmoreservices.com/blog

As an office manager, you have a lot on your plate: preparing payroll, developing and enforcing office policies, returning emails, ordering supplies, assisting with recruiting, and more.

One key responsibility that shouldn’t be overlooked is filing and storage. You need to store your company’s records properly to ensure compliance, efficiency and security.

Nurses are tasked with gathering patient information; thus, they are at the front of patient privacy and information security. Even with the extensive safety protocols in place in most doctors’ offices, hospitals, and other medical establishments, the staff must stay on top of information security to guard against the identity theft of medical records. It is doubly important for those working in smaller medical establishments, as many identity thieves believe – and hope – that information security is not as strong as in larger medical establishments.

Launching in 2025!

Exciting news is on the horizon for e-commerce businesses in Pensacola and the Southeast! Beginning in 2025, Gilmore will officially expand its services to include local e-commerce fulfillment. Whether you’re a growing online store or an established business, our fulfillment services are designed to simplify your operations and help you thrive in a competitive market.

Secure and reliable storage is essential. Whether you're a restaurant owner needing extra space for equipment or a company looking to safeguard valuable assets, Gilmore offers state-of-the-art 3PL (Third-Party Logistics) Commercial Warehousing in Pensacola. Our modern facility, strategically located near downtown Pensacola and I-110, also provides quick access to the Port of Pensacola, ensuring your goods are stored safely and efficiently.

If your company collects and stores medical records, then you know that it’s your legal responsibility to secure those records to protect your patients’ privacy. Likewise, medical record destruction is something that’s mandated by HIPAA.

Tis the season for school shopping, lunch box notes, bus rides, and - identity theft?! Unfortunately, the back-to-school season is a fruitful time for identity theft as vaccination records, free and reduced lunch applications, birth certificates, and other secure and confidential documents change hands, both physically and electronically. Whether you're scanning copies of vital records to your computer and then emailing them to the school or making a copy and sending it with your little one on the first day, you could be at risk of a breach. 

Preparing for natural disasters is one of the most important things you can do, especially if you live in an area where these weather-based issues are more common. As part of your preparedness goals, you'll want to consider document imaging. That involves scanning paper documents and uploading them to a secure, electronic storage location as part of your disaster recovery plans.

By their very nature, law firms generate a tremendous amount of records. Most, if not all of those records, whether on paper or in digital form, contain sensitive information that must be cared for properly to protect the firm and the privacy its clients.

Spring, what a wonderful time of year. The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming and the sun’s shining just a little bit brighter. But the season isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. It’s also the time of year when many successful businesses start cleaning up the office.

Juggling ever-changing records management practices can be a challenge, especially when it comes to the digital processes that we have become comfortable with.

While many records managers monitor industry trends, it's important to fully understand each aspect of records management on a detailed level, including the proper methods for destroying hard drives.

Workers in a commercial warehouse don’t have only their customers’ products to worry about – they also have to worry about best practices for data security. Commercial warehousing has a lot of paper and digital data, including client and customer information and product information. Your employees are your first line of security, so they must have proper training in best practices for commercial warehousing data security.

Commercial warehouses use two methods of quality monitoring their operations: Quality control and quality assurance. Many warehouses use the terms interchangeably, but there is a difference. Your main office could be hundreds or thousands of miles from a commercial warehouse, depending on your operations. You’re not there to make sure the commercial warehouse is doing its job. Gilmore provides quality assurance for all warehouse transactions to ensure that your product is handled and delivered with care.

Whether you are an employee or a CEO, you need to know how to keep your customer’s information safe. Most companies now have extensive cybersecurity policies for everyone to follow, but it’s still imperative that you stay aware of security breaches. Employees could go rogue, or customers and patients could lift documents off desks. Employees could err by inadvertently sharing sensitive information or clicking on links that are viruses or keyloggers.

The number of documents that legal and financial professionals ultimately accumulate can be considerable. Organizing, filing, and securing these documents can become a full-time job in and of itself, which explains why this task is so often pushed aside in favor of more pressing matters. If you’re interested in better storage, you should know that the benefits of taking control of all the chaos will be immeasurable. Gilmore specializes in this secure document storage because we know just how much our clients rely on the additional protection. 

When it’s time to move, you want a moving company that is trustworthy and insured. Gilmore provides residential and commercial moving services. We can help you move in the Pensacola and surrounding areas. One of the benefits of businesses that use us for moving includes data protection. We can store documents that you no longer need to keep in the office, or we can scan the documents and then store them if you feel you might need easier access to them.

Whether you are moving your office or your home, you need to take certain steps to protect your data. This is the perfect time to declutter your office or home office, too, since you should shred any document with an expired retention time. Gilmore provides help with moving your office or home office by offering shredding and moving services. Once you go through the documents and set aside those you no longer need to keep, consider using Gilmore to move the rest of the documents to your new office. Another alternative is to scan documents that you still need to retain but no longer need to keep in the office.

Security is important both at home and in the office. It’s important to safely dispose of unwanted papers. Otherwise, your paperwork could fall into the hands of criminals intent on stealing your identity or the private information of your customers.

First, let's explore who typically utilizes one time shredding services. One-time shredding services are most helpful for individuals and companies who have a large number of confidential documents that need to be destroyed. Examples include small businesses or startups who have accumulated a large number of documents; legal firms; healthcare organizations; government agencies; financial institutions; and individuals.

Customer data in 2023 has never been more valuable for hackers. As the economy rises and falls, and programs like ChatGPT make malware easier to access than ever before, the pressure on organizations just keeps dialing up. It can be nerve-wracking for decision-makers who don’t want to take any chances.

While relocating to a new home or business can be overwhelming, it's also a great opportunity to reduce overwhelm by decluttering and purging. Because you're going through your belongings one by one in order to pack them away, it's the most opportune time to evaluate which items still add value and which items can be donated, thrown away, sold, or securely destroyed. You might not immediately consider documents in the list of things-to-review, but documents belong near the top of the list. Moving documents that contain confidential information from one home or business to the next poses risk to everyone involved; be sure to move only those that you still need.

One of the decisions you'll make as you choose a shredding provider is whether shredding will be performed on-site or off-site.

It’s tax season, which means that you are getting tax forms in the mail, via email and downloading them from various employers, stock trading accounts, banks, and other accounts. You may be doing your taxes online. You should ensure that your data stays safe as it travels through cyberspace. All sites should be secure – they will have an “HTTPS” instead of “HTTP.” You should also use encryption for your email.

When someone steals your personal information and Social Security number, he or she can file a tax return and fraudulently claim a refund. If you are a victim of tax identity theft, you may not be able to file an electronic tax return. The IRS recommends filing a paper return if you cannot file an electronic return. The IRS should notify you if someone filed a tax return in your name.

It’s nearly the end of the year, which means the year-end paper purge is upon you. Now is the time you should start going through the stacks of paper you saved over the year. If this is the first time doing a paper purge, start with separating documents that are past their retention time and those that you need to keep longer. You can then file those you need to keep to make the year-end paper purge easier next year.

While it’s a good practice to have a retention schedule and get rid of documents at the end of their retention time, storing documents where they can be damaged by storms, could damage them to the point they are useless. Whether you are a business or an individual, you should keep copies of your documents – either with a third party or scanned onto an external hard drive that you can lock up and take with you should your business flood.

A client's financial data is what makes an accounting firm go 'round. Thus, they should have a great records management system. Missing records, poor documentation, and regulatory write-ups can be a nightmare. One missing spreadsheet could mean an expensive mistake for the client and the accounting firm. Nintex found that 49 percent of respondents to a study said that locating documents was a problem in their organizations. Some accounting firms keep boxes and boxes of records – records they don't really need to keep. Creating a records retention schedule helps keep your clients' records organized. It also significantly reduces the risk of identity thieves hitting the jackpot if they break into your business.

When you need shredding services, one of the areas you want to consider is what type of shredding equipment is being used. Some of it works better than others, and you don't want any sensitive information falling into the wrong hands. Standard paper shredders work for most things, but you may want to consider whether a strip-cut shredder or cross-cut shredder is the best choice for your needs.

Document destruction is very important to make sure that people aren't getting access to sensitive information. A lot of people just toss things into the trash and don't worry about what happens to them afterward. While that's generally fine for some items, there are plenty of other pieces of paper that could have important details on them. You don't want just anyone to get their hands on any of that. Proper document destruction is the way to reduce that risk and have more peace of mind.

Sending kids back to school can be worrisome, but one of the most commonly overlooked risks is the lack of security when it comes to their personal documents and vital records. When living in common spaces, sharing electronic devices, discarding mail in the trash, and attending class away from the dorm and their belongings, students are at risk of identity theft, credit card fraud, and more.