Electronic information is not the only source of data proliferation. Many instances of identity theft and fraud can be traced back to stolen or misplaced paper documents. An inadequate policy for data handling and disposal can be placing your employees, your customers and your business at risk.
Just how much are you risking by not destroying and disposing of your paper documents and IT assets properly? A lot; serious breaches of the Data Protection Act (DPA) can cost you up to £500,000. Money isn’t the only way you pay for non-compliance, however; the price for not disposing of your assets and their data properly can cost you much more in the way of identity theft, legal liability, fraud and more. The good news is that these threats can be avoided by not making the following errors:
Shredding Only at Office Level
You may think that the shredder used by your office is enough to ensure the complete security of your data. Not so; believe it or not, your data is very vulnerable when you do this. This is because of the way in which office rubbish is disposed of. Often, it goes into the recycling bin with other paper to be recycled, when it should be going into a secure container. Absolute IT offers secure on-site storage solutions, which ensure your data cannot be recovered or removed.
Holding Onto Documents
Do you remember the last time you destroyed your business’s documents? If not, you could be placing your business at real risk. A document retention schedule should be in place, and you should not be holding onto any documents past the end of your retention period. Absolute IT uses cutting-edge technology to destroy your documents and dispose of them in a secure manner. Any items taken from your office are transported in our vans, which are tracked by satellite until they arrive at our facility for final disposal.
Not Considering Promotional Goods
Your business likely has promotional or branded items like pens, uniforms and other products. These can also make your business vulnerable to theft and fraud should someone get hold of your logo. Why is this significant? A fraudster who steals your logo can use it for their own illegal business, which can cause you a lot of grief in the form of legal liability. Our team ensures that all of your information, including your business stationery, is destroyed along with everything else.
Deleting Computer Files is Not Enough
Many think that pressing ‘delete’ and then emptying the recycle bin on a computer is enough to eliminate data forever. Not so. The data remains on your hard drive, and when you think of how many times you hit the ‘delete’ key over a week, you realise just how much data your hard drives may actually be holding onto. The most effective way to eliminate this data is to destroy or sanitise the drives which contain it. Our complete hard drive data destruction service shreds old hard drives completely so there is no chance of data recovery.
When you want to ensure the complete destruction of your data, the above practices are ideal. Absolute IT’s wide range of services can help your business achieve the utmost data security. Find out more by contacting us today.
