It’s a process we all find ourselves doing at least once every few months; taking time to clear out the old to make room for the new. This might be the case at work in your office environment or even at home when you notice that clutter is becoming a problem and you seem to be dealing with more mess than ever. In the event this inevitable time arrives, it’s the best time to sort through old belongings and either toss or donate what you no longer need.

If you’ve been holding onto old cell phones, laptops, or hard drives, you’re not alone. We as a society are constantly upgrading devices in an effort to obtain the latest and greatest on the market; sure this is not a bad thing, but what could be considered bad is the way in which you are dealing with the old, no longer relevant electronics you’ve been storing up until now. Unfortunately, many individuals will simply toss these devices in the recycling or garbage bin, rather than taking them to an electronics recycling company or destruction company. What does this mean? These items will consequently make their way to your local landfill, polluting our environment and potentially harming our wildlife as well.

Not only does this leave our environment at substantial risk when this this takes place, it also leaves your confidential data vulnerable to exposure if stolen; that’s because unless you have your hard drives and other electronic media destroyed by a professional, software used by hackers can be used to recover that data you thought you successfully “erased”. The best way to alleviate both risks is through hiring a professional electronic destruction service.

Environmental Threats

You’re likely familiar with the fact that electronics can pose danger to the environment, but do you know just why they have such a negative impact?  The many components of electronic devices are made with a substantial amount of hazardous materials. Heavy metals and airborne dioxins will eventually enter our water supplies, roadside dust, and the general air when electronics are disposed of in our landfill and left to decay. These harmful toxins hurt our environment and worse, if or when ingested through water and air, their effects on humans are carcinogenic.

Standard hazardous components found in most electronics include:

• Lead
• Mercury
• Beryllium Oxide
• Cadmium
• Brominated Flame Retardants

Review this interesting report for a more in depth breakdown.

Data Breach Risks

Information theft is an ever-growing crime, and often it’s carried out with no warning or signs until the damage has already been done. This is a large drawback of carelessly disposing of electronics improperly and one that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

As mentioned, many are under the belief that deleting data is enough to wipe all documented information; unfortunately, this idea is very much untrue.  Data recovery software and methods are more than capable of retrieving information from electronics.

Due to the nature in which data is created and stored on a hard drive, deleting a file or program doesn’t truly remove it from the system. When you save a file, space is allocated in the hard drive and a directory is created at that time to its location. Deleting a file simply eliminates the directory listing and lists the space as available for something else to be saved over it. In this way old data will eventually be replaced with something new, but there are no guarantees that it’ll be unrecoverable. As you can see, just because you’ve hit delete, you aren’t really safe from all the risks of data theft.

The Safest Solution for Your Electronic Data

The best approach to ensure your data can’t be recovered, while also ensuring the environment is safe, is physically destroying your electronic devices. Partnering with a company, like A1 DATASHRED, that provides reliable hard drive destruction services is your best bet.

Media destruction services provided by our professionals will take your old electronic media and destroy them in minutes on-site, at your location. Our industrial shred equipment is built to shred through paper and all your electronic devices. Once the process is completed, the particles are sent to be recycled, the raw material is then removed and reused in new products. This not only keeps electronics away from our landfills but also ensures your sensitive data is never exposed!

A1 DATASHRED is a document destruction provider also offering media destruction services, for a more convenient and practical service approach.  We are proud to keep residents and businesses in Boston protected from information theft, while doing our part to reduce our carbon footprint.

If you are looking for safe media disposal solutions, contact us today. We are more than happy to assist you!

Contact us today at 1-888-95-SHRED

It’s not unheard of for small business owners to skip out on certain security measures, simply because they believe their size translates to not having a need for them; unfortunately the opposite is the case and in reality, it is these small companies who are commonly targeted by cyber crime and information theft.

With that said however, it shouldn’t be the only reason you establish a secure work environment; data breach can add up very quickly and sadly it continues to target a variety of companies, both big and small. Not only can the consequences be devastating from a financial standpoint, but it can also hurt your reputation. Small start-up companies are usually more vulnerable to fraud and information theft because they are typically still establishing their business and customer base.

What security practices should be implemented to protect your Boston business?

• Get Familiar with Your Legal Obligations
  Be sure you are familiarized on the state and federal privacy laws that are applicable to your specific industry. Remember that ensuring information stays protected always is a legal responsibility you have as a business owner.
• Design a Security Policy and Put it in Writing
  Create an informative and detailed document that clearly specifies why securely managing and disposing of business documents is so necessary in your workplace. Remember to go over unique outlines for your mobile workforce as well.
• Implement Document Management Processes
  It’s in your best interest to collect information that is applicable and helpful to your business, only. Not only that, to ensure total 100% security, you’ll want to be sure that access is limited and granted to those trusted and entitled to view that information. Make sure you have a reliable information backup plan as well, should there be an unexpected disaster or fire; you don’t want to risk losing valuable information. Be sure you have an organized list of inventories that’s for any records deemed confidential. Files should be labelled according to their appropriate shredding date; this is helpful for both electronic and hard copy records.
• Remember IT Protection
  We highly suggest that you implement the most cutting edge and up-to-date technological safeguards, to stop as well as identify, any suspicious viruses or malware.

• Train Your Employees Accordingly
  Regular training for your employees is crucial in relation to any updates to your privacy policy or document management processes. Security procedures are imperative to keep your company safe, but they are only effective if they are being executed properly and everyone is on the same page.

• Carry Out Risk Assessments
  Design a Security Risk Assessment Schedule to sort out whether there are security gaps in your business and which areas need further improvement and attention.

Professional Document Shredding
Hire a reliable and trusted shredding company to handle the secure disposal of your sensitive records.  A1 DATASHRED offers a plenty of document shredding solutions that meet your budget and unique needs.

Is your shredding company charging you a surcharge?

In their August 2019 earnings report, Stericycle/Shred-it has announced they would be adding another surcharge to their customers in order to offset the recent downturn in the value of selling the shredded paper. Be sure to check your bills and make sure your document shredding company isn’t passing along this charge to you.

A1 DataShred wants to let you know we don’t charge surcharges and we have no intention of passing along this financial burden to our customer’s we value our relationships with each and every one of you and wanted to thank you for your continued business.

Call now for a free quote from A1 DataShred to avoid these surcharges (978) 858-0200

City of Boston is hosting a FREE Paper Shredding for the residents of Boston, MA on Saturday, August 17, 2019, 9am-2pm. An ID with a Boston address is required. A1 DATASHRED will shred up to 10 copy paper size boxes or containers of your personal documents. This event is for Boston residents only, not businesses. Bring your old tax returns, ATM receipts, medical bills, bank/credit card statements, used airline tickets and/or old utility bills. Shred your personal information to protect your identity.

For more information, please visit https://www.boston.gov/calendar/household-hazardous-waste-dropoff-08-17-19

Wachusett Earthday, INC will host a FREE Paper Shredding event for residents of Boylston, Holden, Paxton, Princeton, Rutland, Sterling and West Boylston on Saturday, August 3, 2019, 8am to 12pm. Please have your ID ready at check in.

Bring your medical bills, old tax returns, and or bank statements to be shredded in a secure manner. There will be a mobile shredding truck, so you can see the document destroyed right in front of your eyes. Protect your identity by shredding your personal information. A1 Datashred will destroy paper information.

For more information: https://www.wachusettearthday.org/event/hhp-only-2019-04-copy-copy-copy/