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

As a business owner, it’s your job to maintain accurate records and destroy them in accordance with regulations. While it might be tempting to simply buy a shredder and do your shredding in-house, there are some reasons that security experts don’t recommend it.

Documents are important to every business. Whether you’re storing client contracts, printing invoices, or filing your taxes, you need to maintain accurate records and ensure that you and your employees have what you need to make your company a success.

Filing taxes is an annual requirement and one that can occupy a lot of time for both individuals and businesses. Once your taxes are filed, you might want to relax and forget about them. But, you’ll need to consider what to do with the documents related to your taxes.

Shredding documents is a critical component of compliance with regulations like HIPAA and FACTA. When documents are not properly destroyed, there’s a risk that they might be stolen or reconstructed, thus compromising the privacy and security of your clients.

All businesses create documents to record customer and client interactions and maintain employee records. While it’s important to store those documents for some time, both government regulations and personal preferences may make it necessary to destroy them.

All good things must come to an end, and business information is no exception.

Even if destroying physical and electronic information isn’t at the top of your priority list, that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Destruction is a crucial part of the information lifecycle, which protects against fraud, identity theft and ensures security of business and client interests.

As your business grows, a filing cabinet is often not enough to contain all of your important records. Threats like theft, prying eyes and environmental dangers like mold or water damage can seriously harm your important documents and put your business at risk.

Packing a storeroom with boxes or renting a storage unit may seem like an easy fix, but is it the best way to keep your important records, and business, safe?  

Whether you operate a small, single-physician family practice or are an administrator in a large hospital, records management is one of your primary responsibilities. Efficient records management is critical, not only for day-to-day operations but—most critically—for patient confidentiality and compliance with federal mandates like HIPAA.

When compared to in-house shredding, secure document destruction saves money, increases security and enhances internal workflows.

If you’re looking for ways to cut costs and maximize revenue in 2017, partnering with a professional paper shredding service is a great place to start. Professional on-site shredding or off-site shredding eliminates many of the risks and extraneous costs related to in-house shredding practices.

As a responsible business owner, you likely already know that certified document destruction offers a cost-effective and convenient solution for ensuring compliance with document disposal regulatory guidelines. It can also save you money by enhancing security and maximizing your employees’ time.

Handling your shredding needs in the office with a consumer-grade shredder might seem like a cost-effective and time-efficient way to destroy your company’s confidential documents, but your business might not save as much money and time as you think. In-house shredding can waste valuable employee time, increases the potential for mistakes and even poses security risks.

When it comes to records management, compliance is a critical element of success. Generally, compliance has to do with adhering to regulations set forth by a certain industry or governing body such as maintaining confidentiality, updating documents on a schedule, and destroying documents when the time is right.

Keeping business operations streamlined and running smoothly is a key goal for many business owners. After all, as your business grows, so too do clients, responsibilities, and business documents.

Business documents may include the paper documents you house on-site, or the electronic records you keep for each new customer. Managing records is a necessary aspect of many businesses, but keeping them organized and secure over time can present an unforeseen challenge for many business owners and administrative professionals.

When you hear the word “destruction,” you may automatically think the worst. After all, you spend your days working to protect your important documents — not destroy them.

When you throw something away in a dumpster, chances are that you don’t stop to wonder if that trash could eventually fall into the wrong hands. But whether it’s a banana peel or old business records, just tossing something in the trash isn’t as secure as you think.

If your company needs to shred a piece of paper for data security purposes, it’s as easy as running it through a personal paper shredder, right? Not necessarily.

While some businesses may be able to get by with a personal paper shredder and a few dedicated employees to shred documents here and there, your business may need something more reliable.

After all, when the amount of paper begins to build, or sensitive information is at stake, shredding in-house can go from convenient to complicated in no time.  

If you’re thinking about partnering with a records management company, it’s a good idea to learn how the company operates and what exactly it can do for your business. After all, you’ll be relying on that company to handle, store, and securely dispose of your company’s sensitive physical or digital documents, so you’ll want to know what the company does and how it can help.

Have you ever wondered what a records management company actually does in a typical day? Here’s a hypothetical “day in the life” to help you learn just what can be accomplished in eight hours.

These days, it seems there is a do-it-yourself option for everything. You can make your own candle holder from a glass bottle, or remodel your own bathroom with a few tips from YouTube.

Understanding the often complex details of records management is no easy job. If you handle records management for a business, you know it’s an ever-changing discipline that can be both exciting and frustrating.

Spring is officially here, and at Gilmore Services, that marks the start of a new Shred-a-Thon event to securely and conveniently shred your sensitive information! Gilmore Services is proud to partner with the BBB, WEAR3 and Cat Country 98.7, to offer complimentary shredding services to help our community organize, reduce clutter and protect their identity this season.

You wouldn’t entrust just any company to maintenance your car or mortgage your home, would you? More often than not, you’re going to research to confirm that they are licensed and have the proper certifications in place. If they don’t, then the search continues until you find a secure business or a trustworthy partner.

While a formal records management plan needs to include document destruction at the end of every record’s lifecycle, destroying a business document before it has reached the end of its retention period can be a costly and time-consuming mistake.

Depending on the industry, the possibility of litigation can be a major threat in the back of a business owner's mind, and it’s not always possible to completely avoid difficult legal situations.

2015 is quickly winding down. As you look back over the past year, are you confident that your business records management program was as effective as possible?

If you’re in charge of records management at a law firm, there's no doubt the role can be demanding, and at times, stressful. After all, who knows better what kind of legal issues can result from poor document management than someone working at a law firm?

It has become common practice for office environments to use secure shredding bins.

With regulations constantly changing, technology always evolving, and criminals working harder than ever to get a hold of sensitive information, deciding whether to store or destroy your business documents can be confusing, even stressful. What needs to be saved? What needs to be destroyed? How? When? Where?