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On-Site versus Off-Site Shredding: Which Is Best for Your Business?

By: Aeronx Mc Mall

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Shredding is an important part of maintaining corporate security. Often, paperwork can accumulate and take up huge amounts of office space. Many important documents need to be kept for a certain time period so that company auditors can refer back to them. After that time has expired, you need to find a secure way to destroy the documents. Simply throwing them away will be placing valuable information at the disposal of anyone who happens to pick it up and that could adversely affect your company's security. Some companies have in-house shredders but unless these are properly managed, they could also compromise your company's security. Professional shredding companies provide both on-site and off-site shredding services. Before deciding which is best suited to your company, it is a good idea to evaluate your business security needs.

What Type of Business Do You Operate?
Some people ask if every business should use a shredding service. Most times the answer is affirmative and here are some reasons why. Even if you operate a small home-based business, your business will have some confidential records. These may include accounting and bookkeeping journals, invoices, supplier records, contracts and tax returns. While many systems now operate electronically, a printed copy is often required for meetings and business transactions. In many cases, signatures are required so documents have to be printed to seal agreements. Those are all documents that you don't simply want to throw away as they contain confidential business information. Nobody wants to have to have filing cupboards full of paperwork that is no longer needed, and shredding is an effective way to get rid of expired documents. If you operate a larger business, you will have an even greater need for corporate security. If you have a policy to shred expired documents then you want to know that an accurate record is kept of all the documents that have been destroyed.

What Is On-Site Shredding?
On-site shredding is a service that processes the documents at your business premises while you wait. The process entails the shredding company representative delivering a shredding container to the client's office. This container is sealed and has a postbox flap into which documents to be destroyed are inserted. A single person in the company is responsible for the container and they maintain a record of all documents that are inserted into the container. On schedule, once the container is full, the shredding company representative will come and collect the container from the client's offices. After signing over collection of it, the driver takes the container outside to their truck. The container is then inserted into the shredding machine on the truck and the documents are immediately processed. The driver then returns the empty container to the client together with a certificate of destruction. To ensure that security in maintained during the process, a camera records the shredding process to make sure the documents are shredded into unreadable pieces.

What Is Off-Site Shredding?
Off-site shredding is quite similar to on-site shredding except for the location of the shredding processes. As with on-site shredding, the container is delivered to the client's premises and an allocated person is responsible for maintaining records of what is inserted into the container. When the collection is due, the shredding company driver will collect the container. The locked container is then taken off-site to the processing plant to be shredded. The container is manually emptied into the processing plant. A security camera monitors staff activity at the plant to ensure that no secure information contained in the documents is compromised. Once the shredding process is complete, the shredded pieces of paper are bundled together so they can be more easily recycled.

Which Option Is Best for Your Business?
As you can see, there is not much difference between the two shredding systems. The primary difference is the added security offered by on-site shredding. The documents are destroyed before they leave the premises, a camera monitors the shredding process, and a certificate of destruction is immediately available after the shredding process has been completed. If you have highly sensitive information that you want to destroy, this may be the best option for your business. If, however, the information is fairly general and you are not overly concerned about security then you may opt for the off-site service.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Most people who choose a paper shredding new york company are not aware that there are major differences between companies in terms of information security, price and customer service. At American Security Shredding, we protect businesses and their customers by providing highly secure, on-site and off-site shredding, to help them comply with HIPAA, GLB and FACTA, as well as all other federal information destruction laws.

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