You’d never leave your business’s doors open overnight. Even if it’s highly unlikely that someone with bad intentions would show up and try to get in, locking all entry points is a core part of a comprehensive security strategy. Media shredding is just as critical. Shredding hard drives and other media items at the end of their life is the only way to know for sure that your sensitive digital data is destroyed.
Failing to enforce a comprehensive media shredding policy exposes your business’s data, your employees’ data and your customers’ data to outsiders. Fortunately, good media shredding practices can be easy for businesses to implement and follow. On your end, it’s all about getting a good system in place for collecting media onsite, and partnering with an experienced media shredding service that can handle everything from there.
5 Components of a Comprehensive Media Shredding Strateg
- A plan to make sure ALL the business’s media is collected for shredding.
For businesses and other organizations, employee training is a key part of a successful media shredding system. It’s imperative that any employee who is issued company-owned media items understands that these items must be collected for shredding when they’re no longer needed. That includes not only hard drives and electronics that contain hard drives, but others kinds of media too. Flash drives, SIM cards, tapes, CDs and other disks, X-rays and other kinds of film are all examples of media that businesses need to shred. Include language about media shredding in any new employee training materials, as well as in your business’s written data destruction policy. Employees need to know that the business pays attention to where these items end up, so they can’t throw them away or think about sneaking obsolete devices home for personal use.
- Locked, tamper-proof containers for collecting media.
Every business should have dedicated containers or other locked storage systems for collecting media that needs to be shredded. Hard drives and other media items can be valuable on the second-hand market, so it’s important to keep them somewhere that visitors passing through your business can’t access them.
How much storage you need depends on the quantity of obsolete media you generate, and how often you arrange for your shredding service to make pickups.
- A partnership with a reputable media shredding service in your area.
Effectively destroying hard drives and other media requires powerful commercial shredders, to rip those devices into small, misshapen pieces that can never be reassembled. A local shredding service that offers pickup services can take most of the work of media shredding out of your hands. Make sure your shredding service contract gives you the option to schedule regular pickups as well as one-time pickups as needed. (For example, if you plan to do a big office cleanout ahead of a renovation of your facilities, you might request additional containers and additional pickups.)
- Clearly-defined security procedures.
As obsolete media items move along the chain of custody from your organization into the hands of your shredding company, there can be a lot of opportunities for security lapses to happen. A comprehensive data security policy should mandate certain security procedures at every step. Think about in-house security measures like requiring that the media collection container be kept in a locked room, and having employees check their devices in with a designated point person before putting them into the container for shredding.
Organizations should also verify the security measures taken by their shredding service to safeguard their items before they’re shredded. For example, Northeast Data Destruction’s commercial shredding facility has an alarm system with continuous third-party monitoring and 24-hour digital surveillance with 90-day backup recording. Northeast Data Destruction also maintains NAID “AAA” certification, which signifies that our shredding facility is secure and our entire team has been thoroughly background checked.
- Documentation of every step.
Media shredding is hard to prove after the fact, unless you’ve maintained good records. Keep them just in case you’re ever asked about your data destruction procedures during an audit, or a customer or employee accuses you of having allowed their data to be breached. Keep internal logs tracking when various media items were turned in for shredding and by whom, along with Certificates of Destruction from your shredding service.
Contact Northeast Data Destruction for Media Shredding Services in Massachusetts
Northeast Data Destruction makes making secure media shredding easy for Massachusetts businesses. From delivering locked collection containers to your facilities, to providing Certificates of Destruction once your hard drives and other media are destroyed, we do all the heavy lifting to help you keep your business’s sensitive data secure. You can even arrange to witness your organization’s media be shredded onsite in our NAID “AAA” certified facility. If you need media shredding services in Massachusetts, contact me today!