All businesses need shredding services, but not all businesses use their shredding services in the same ways. A chain grocery store, a doctor’s office and a small accounting firm are all going to need different things from their shredding company. Having the flexibility to tailor your business’s shredding services to your specific needs lets you safeguard your sensitive data without paying for things you don’t need. That’s true no matter what your business does—but there are certain industries where having flexible shredding services may be particularly important.
How Can Different Industries Benefit From Customizing Shredding Services?
Healthcare
Healthcare providers and other businesses in the healthcare industry have significant and unique pressures around data disposal. Violating HIPAA is just not something that any healthcare organization can afford to risk. A healthcare data breach can also be so costly and damaging that patient health is affected.
As a refresher, the HIPAA Privacy Rule requires covered entities to use “appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect the privacy of protected health information (PHI), in any form.”
The HIPAA Security Rule also requires covered entities to “address the final disposition of electronic PHI and/or the hardware or electronic media on which it is stored.” So, both paper records and electronic records stored on hard drives must be protected completely. Exposing even one piece of PHI to someone outside the organization could result in fines, and trigger HIPAA’s breach notification law.
Customizable healthcare shredding services can be used to:
- Schedule pick-up services for large quantities of obsolete materials after purging records.
- Shred materials include X-rays, photos, tapes and other types of media that may be part of healthcare records.
- Provide documentation (Certificates of Destruction) for the organization’s records.
Finance
Like healthcare businesses, financial organizations typically have to follow strict regulatory requirements around data destruction, including the FTC Safeguards Rule. Financial businesses also tend to generate a huge amount of paper records filled with sensitive financial information. Client trust is imperative for these businesses to survive. Advisors and other financial professionals can’t risk their reputations by exposing client data.
Customizable financial shredding services can be used to:
- Schedule drop-off services at the shredding facility instead of using pickup services (when a financial organization wants to maintain the highest level of control over its confidential materials).
- Arrange same-day shredding services, to destroy unneeded files and supporting documents just as soon as a deal is concluded or after a client leaves the business.
- Provide documentation of shredded materials for the financial organization’s records, in case of an audit or compliance issue.
Education
Educational organizations may have a few key challenges around shredding. They tend to generate a ton of paper documents, hard drives and other materials that store sensitive data about students and staff. However, that output may fluctuate a lot over the school year. A high school might fill up its shredding bins once a week most of the time, but there’s going to be a ton of extra stuff to shred after teachers clean out classrooms at the end of the school year. The school might have a less frequent need for shredding services over the summer and during break periods, too.
School security is also a critically important issue that ties into shredding services. Educational organizations need extremely strict policies around disposal of things like access badges, employee ID cards, branded school clothing and records related to school security procedures. Anything that could let an unauthorized person gain access to a school has to be permanently destroyed by a trusted shredding service once it’s no longer needed by the school.
Customizable school shredding services can be used to:
- Schedule both regular pickups during the school year, and arrange one-off pickups as needed during the busiest and slowest parts of the year.
- Arrange pickups at the time of day that’s best for the school’s schedule, like after students go home.
- Collect and shred large quantities of obsolete electronics equipment, such as an entire storage room filled with outdated computers.
- Collect and shred obsolete access badges and employee IDs to protect school safety.
Government Organizations
Any entity that is part of a government system (or shares records with government organizations) must have strict and explicitly clear policies about secure data disposal. Getting access to a government organization’s files might be a dream come true for identity thieves. Even at the municipal level, government organizations can have Social Security numbers, addresses, tax records, health records, financial information and many more pieces of sensitive data about citizens.
Government offices may also have a lot of random visitors moving through every day. Obsolete files and other private data that’s ready to be shredded should be carefully protected while on the premises, as well as after it leaves the office for shredding.
Local government organizations might also want to provide shredding services for community members on occasion, like by organizing one-day shredding events. It’s essential to contract with a reputable shredding company for such a shredding event. The people who attend will assume that the hosting organization has vetted the shredding service and that it’s trustworthy.
Customizable government organization shredding services can be used to:
- Provide locked containers for collecting files and other materials that are ready for shredding.
- Arrange for shredding to be witnessed by a representative of the organization.
- Provide documentation of shredded materials for the organization’s records.
- Schedule one-time shredding events for government employees and/or community members.
Does Your Business Have Customized Shredding Services?
Northeast Data Destruction doesn’t provide one-size-fits-all shredding services. We want to know what your business needs from its shredding company, then tailor our services to meet those needs. I’m happy to answer any questions you have about Northeast Data Destruction’s services, team and NAID AAA certified shredding facility—contact me today!