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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Using a company for RIM services significantly decreases the risk of losing important information. You not only know where all of your business records are but they are also kept safe from prying eyes. And, when combined with a retention schedule, your business records won't ever take over digital or physical storage.

Most Americans have paper waste at home that would pose a risk if disposed of in the garbage can, like bank statements, tax returns that are beyond their retention period, loan applications, and more. Any document that contains your date of birth, social security number, passwords, signatures, bank account number, or credit card number can be used by criminals to steal your identity and cause you harm. Additionally, documents that contain your address, phone number, email address, family history (i.e. mother's maiden name, grandparents' names, etc.), children's names or dates of birth, and more can be used to guess passwords and initiate unwanted contact. Shredding documents that contain confidential information is key.

If you are starting a new job working from a home office, you need to get the office ready before the first day of work. Being prepared is the best way to start and be successful in a new venture. Part of getting ready – other than furnishing the office – is to organize the services you will need, including document shredding. An office deals with many documents and digital media that contain others' private information.

As the end of another year approaches, now is a good time to evaluate your document destruction policy and consider your end-of-year shredding strategy. While it's easy to get a little relaxed about documents that have reached the end of life, leaving them in storage beyond their shred date poses risk to your home and your identity security. Year-end purging can help free up space in your home, remove fire hazards, protect your personal information, and prevent threats of identity theft or fraud. While year-end document shredding can seem overwhelming, we're here to help.

It’s the time of year when it’s time to review and reflect on what’s occurred throughout the year. It’s also a time where purging should be at an all-time high. Document shredding should be on schedule for the final weeks of the year, in addition to document scanning for documents and data that can’t be disposed of. Knowing which records to retain and which ones can be destroyed can make or break an organization that deals with sensitive data. An effective plan must be in place and carried out on a consistent basis.

Data breaches can happen to anyone, regardless of the size of the company. A breach, whether of physical or digital documents, can cost you a lot of money. You could be fined, and the person whose identity was stolen could sue you. You can take steps to minimize the chances of a data breach. Combining document destruction, document scanning, records storage, cloud storage and implementing a strong security system for your computers are all things you can do to minimize a data breach.

Trusting a company to handle scanning your records, whether they are your HR records or your clients' files, is a big step for some businesses. When it comes to scanning and storage, you want to make sure that the company you choose scans every document and that the document storage facility is secure.

Shredding documents and then recycling them doesn't really help the environment when you can't send those documents to a recycling facility that handles tiny pieces of paper. When you shred paper, it shortens the fibers and makes the paper just about useless. However, because we at Gilmore have so many documents – bales of them every day – we send the shredded documents to a special recycling plant that is able to use these tiny pieces of paper to make other products.

While aftereffects from Covid-19 aren’t over, many companies require their employees to return to office areas. What does that mean? It means that those employees who were working from home need document shredding solutions to ensure no company data or information is compromised. In addition, the company must have storage and other solutions ready to ensure a smooth return.

You’re ready to get back in the swing of things and are considering downsizing your home office. There are tons of things you can do, but first, determine why you are downsizing. Have your needs changed? Are you going back to the office? Businesses have a few challenges ahead as they determine whether they will start employing a full staff at the office, keep a rotating hybrid of employees, or want to go entirely remote. For employees, as you’re contemplating what’s next, consider the following:

During Florida's wet seasons, it's easy enough for businesses to get flooded, even those that are not in flood zones. You can save your clients' documents by taking the steps to go paperless or, at the very least, by using a document storage and scanning service. When you decide to go paperless, that means that you will probably have to scan hundreds or thousands of documents that have not reached the end of their retention time. It sounds like a big chore that most would rather ignore.

People are often at one end of the spectrum or another – they either keep tax records forever or throw them away as soon as they do their taxes. If you're in the former category, it's time to go through all of those old records and shred those you don't need to keep. If you're in the latter category, you need to keep your tax record for up to seven years.

A hard drive is a particularly valuable item to a criminal. Whether it starts as an idle curiosity or a full-fledged identity theft scheme, hard drives contain much information that people would prefer to keep private. If you own a business, it's up to you to keep your customers' information from falling into the wrong hands. The ripple effects of just one identity breach can branch into areas of people's lives that they may not have even realized were possible. Merely wiping a hard drive can't always do the job, and this is a common fallacy that can land people in hot water. Real hard drive destruction takes the whole process a step further, so you're assured that all the data stored on that drive is gone forever. 

It's tax season again, which means that you should go through your tax files and shred documents that you no longer have to keep.

When you are looking for a shredding company, you need to check several factors, including the locality and the certification. Making a list titled how to choose shredding company and googling shredding company near me helps you locate local companies and compare services and certifications.

As a business manager or owner, you want to protect your client's confidential information, so you make the smart move and decide to work with a local shredding service company.  But is that shredding service provider AAA NAID Certified?

Smaller businesses often forego retaining a shredding company because they believe they do not have enough paper or digital media to shred. Gilmore Services provides shredding services for small and large companies by offering one-time purge shredding and ongoing shredding.

If your business shreds documents in-house or does not shred documents at all, you should consider retaining a shredding company to help you prevent your customers’ information from being stolen or hacked from your computers. Shredding documents with an over-the-counter shredder might not create pieces of documents that are small enough, which means they are at risk of being recreated.

Did you know that the Federal Trade Commission ranks Florida as number 2 on the list for highest number of identity theft cases in 2017?  You can see the rankings from 2017 here. 

Businesses that are bound by HIPAA regulations, including those who are in the health care industry and related spaces, must take care to dispose of patients’ personal health information properly.

When you think about shredding personal document, your focus is probably on financial documents. Anything that could potentially compromise your credit or put you at risk of identity theft is an obvious chose for shredding and you’re not likely to overlook it.

Is your company still using a manual paper shredder? There are many businesses that rely on employees to shred documents instead of partnering with a local shredding service.

Even if your finances and personal affairs are uncomplicated, you still have personal documents that you must retain for legal purposes. But you might not be clear about which documents you need to keep and how long you need to retain them.

Gilmore Services is a family-owned company and we do business the "old-fashioned way". A lot of businesses say that, but we do it. Here’s what we mean by old-fashioned:

Do you handle your paper shredding in-house? If you do, you might be wondering if you should be researching paper shredding services as a more secure and efficient alternative.