Houston Document Destruction: Reasons to Shred

Houston Document Destruction: Reasons to Shred

If you’re unsure if your office needs professional Houston document destruction, consider the following:

Are you unwittingly revealing your business activities to your competitors?  Can criminals access your personal information, and that of your employees, clients, and business partners?  If you dispose of your sensitive documents by throwing them in a dumpster or a recycle bin, then you have already answered “yes” to these questions.


Shred Pro offers a higher level of security and cost-effectiveness than most businesses can achieve by destroying their confidential documents themselves.

Because we provide locking consoles at no charge, destroy your documents on-site, and then transport the destroyed remains ourselves to a recycling center, you do not waste time and money paying your employees to perform these tasks themselves.  You also won’t incur any equipment or maintenance costs, and you eliminate the paper dust that inevitably accumulates around the office shredder.

 
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privacy protection

Privacy protection is the law.  Various laws mandate the destruction of information about your customers, employees, or patients.  Document destruction allows you to be compliant with those laws, which include:

 

  • HIPPA – Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act
  • GLBA – Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (Financial Modernization Act of 1999)
  • FACTA – Fair & Accurate Credit Transaction Act of 2003

 

FACTA contains a number of provisions intended to combat identity theft and consumer fraud and related crimes:

 

  • Any person who maintains or otherwise possesses consumer information, or any compilation of consumer information, for a business purpose must properly dispose of such information by taking reasonable measures to protect against unauthorized access to or use of the information in connection with its disposal. 
  • Reasonable measures to protect against unauthorized access to or use of consumer information in connection with its disposal would include: implementing and monitoring compliance with policies and procedures that require the burning, pulverizing or shredding of papers containing consumer information, so that the information cannot practicably be read or reconstructed.

 

identity theft

Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States.  To protect yourself, your employees and your clients/patients from identity theft, never discard materials that contain personal information, such as social security numbers, names, addresses, etc. 

 

records to destroy

It is vital that you destroy outdated:

 

  • Payroll, student, insurance and medical records (HIPAA)
  • Credit and job applications (FACTA, GLB)
  • Tax returns
  • Drafts, business plans, customer lists, new product designs
  • Financial reports, cancelled checks, bank statements or other account information
  • any items containing signatures, including credit card receipts, invoices, Correspondence, and employment information
  • Drivers license and social security information
  • Maps/blueprints, medical records and charts, x-rays, micro-film and microfiche

 

U.S. courts hold that information discarded to the trash is not valuable to you, and therefore does not deserve the protection of law. This is why operatives who engage in corporate espionage go first to dumpsters and trashcans to obtain sensitive information about their target businesses; the courts will not punish them for retrieving the data that you have discarded as worthless.

When your office is ready to shred, Houstondocument destruction professionals will come to you. ContactShred Pro today.