Shred away your worst memory of 2016 at Good Riddance Day

Earlier this year Bob Johnson, CEO of National Association of Information Destruction (NAID), shared emerging trends in the North American data destruction market. One of them was that companies would become more receptive to implementing a ‘destroy-all’ program, also known as a Shred-it all Policy. The document shredding policy requires the secure destruction of all documents that are no longer needed for compliance and other purposes.

Letting employees decide whether information is confidential or not is “very risky, even fool-hearty”, he said. Research has shown that more than 30% of data breaches in the workplace are caused by simple human error.

What’s also important to know is that a Shred-it all Policy is not just a smart policy for the workplace – consumers can benefit too.

Good Riddance Day

The importance of securely destroying all discarded documents is an underlying message of the up-coming annual Good Riddance Day event in New York City.

The event, which is being held on December 28, promotes destroying any and all ‘memories’ on paper.

Document destruction leader Shred-it parks one of its mobile shredding truck in Times Square and invites participants to watch as their forgettable or outlandish memories are permanently and securely shredded.

Document Destruction

In the run-up to the event, consumers are invited to enter a contest to win a free trip for two to the event. To enter, participants have to submit a picture of the item they want to destroy – and explain the significance of saying good riddance to it in 500 words or less. 

While destroying unpleasant, embarrassing and forgettable memories is a good way to end one year and start another, it’s also important to make the secure destruction of confidential data a habit.

Information thieves steal and collect names, addresses, account numbers, and other confidential information, and use it for identity theft and other crimes.

Document Shredding Policy

To implement a document shredding policy in the workplace, partner with a reliable document destruction company and replace recycling bins with locked consoles. Whether information would be of interest to information thieves or not, all documents are deposited into the locked consoles for safe keeping (once documents are in the console they cannot be retrieved). During scheduled servicing, a trained security professional comes into the workplace and removes stored documents from consoles for secure destruction.

Secure Chain of Custody

A professional document destruction company provides a secure chain of custody from start to finish with a Certificate of Destruction after every shred.

Workplace Benefits

A Shred-it all Policy is important because it:

• Improves information privacy and confidentiality;
• Simplifies document disposal for employees;
• Highlights the importance of information security to everyone;
• Lowers the risk of employee error;
• Reduces opportunity for insider theft;
• Improves compliance with privacy laws;
• Reduces the risk of information breaches.

Shred-it and Forget It

Consumers can also reduce the risk of information theft when they ‘shred-it and forget it’. Learn more about Shred-it’s Good Riddance Day Contest – and how to start the New Year with a clean slate.