As thousands of people in Australia continue to work from home, one question looms large above all else – when will we all be back in the office?
Regardless of when that happens, the surge of workers returning to the office will result in many organisations, even those who have already contracted
regular document destruction services, considering a
one-off purge of sensitive documents workers may have kept at home during the pandemic.
While decluttering the workplace will improve the work environment for returning employees, document purges will also have a positive impact on information security.
How One-off Paper Shredding Can Protect Sensitive Information
Here are three reasons why organisations should be considering a one-off document purge:
1. Better protection against theft: Employees working from home right now may be consolidating sensitive paperwork in a cardboard box or the like. Following remote work best practices, like keeping sensitive information in a locked cabinet until it can be properly destroyed, is a next best step but it’s not a permanent solution. Once employees are back in the office, encourage them to safely bring in any sensitive documents from home to have them securely destroyed in a one-off purge. Follow up by implementing a
Clean Desk Policy to continue best practices moving forward.
2. Reduce human error: Employee error is often the root cause of data security breaches. Reduce the risk by doing a one-off purge to clear the workspace of excess and untidy materials such as loose and boxed paper documents and old CDs, thumb drives, and
hard drives. Research has also shown that clutter is distracting and getting rid of it will help employees do their jobs more effectively and make fewer mistakes.
3. Secure document management: Documents that contain personally identifiable information (PII) should never be stored in easily-accessible office areas. Once the document purge is complete, an organisation may decide to adopt a more official
document management process. A policy can help by directing daily workflows, storage requirements for PII, and data retention schedules. A one-off shredding service may also make it clear to the organisation that on-going
secure document destruction will be helpful too.
Protect Your Business with our One-off Shredding Service
For this service, a Certified Security Representative will come to the workplace to remove all of the collected documents, hard drives, and other media. Using industrial-grade equipment, paper will be securely shredded, and digital media will be crushed or shredded. There are
specialty shredding services too for items such as identity cards that may have expired.
Contact us for a free quote or to learn more about how else Shred-it can protect your documents.
Disclaimer
This article is provided for your convenience and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should not take, or refrain from taking, actions based upon the content of this article. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. Please seek professional legal advice.