When you need a safe collection place for your sensitive documents in the office, you should get shred bins placed in strategic locations. The bins offer a convenient and secure way for you to implement document disposal. Sometimes though, people can get confused about what exactly should and should not get placed into the bins. Let’s clear that up now so you can get on with your information security.

What Does Go In A Shred Bin

The list of what goes in is very straight forward. Any kind of sensitive documents you may have belong in this bin. Any and all print outs, letters, official documents, medical records, etc. Anything containing sensitive information. You can even throw in the envelopes, folders, staples, and paper clips that are included with them if you want, the shredders can easily handle them.

What Does Not Go Into A Shred Bin

Now we come to the real meat and potatoes of the issue: what you don’t put in. The list we’ll go over is short and sweet, and may seem very obvious, but sometimes people need a friendly reminder about what should and shouldn’t be done.

Assorted Garbage / Recycling

Since we are talking about shredding bins, you obviously do not use it to throw away your trash or recycling. It’s entirely possible that a rather cheeky individual might decide slipping some trash into your shred bins is a good way to get rid of some stuff, but you’ll only be creating trouble. Lets avoid doing this as it is irresponsible, and dishonest.

Electronics

Most people know by this point about the destruction of electronics being the only safe way to dispose of them. Some may be tempted to throw a few old hard drives and USB sticks into their bin with the papers. There are some serious risks with doing this, which is why the processes are different. Electronics have heavy metals in them, in addition they may have batteries as well. These chemicals could, if given the right conditions, break down and leak toxins into your bin, presenting a hazard to anyone who uses it.

Additionally, batteries could leak their acid into the bin with similar results. Lithium-ion batteries, which are extremely common these days, can also pose a fire risk in the right conditions. Do you want to have a fire hazard in a bin full of papers in the corner of your office? Probably not.

Stick To Its Purpose

Secure shredding bins have their specific purpose, that is the safe disposal of sensitive information in support of your information security procedure. We can help you out with that should you need it. Bins, used properly, and a full suit of services.

The shredding of secure documents is a vital aspect of information security in this day and age. There are those out there who spend their time attempting to steal your information so they can commit felonies in your name. One way to counteract this is by destroying your information, for paper records specifically that involves having them shredded into fine confetti. But what actually happens to the shreds there after? Are they just carted off to parts unknown?

The Fate Of Paper Shreds

Once the paper shreds are taken away from your location, or the shred facility, they get taken to a very special place. That place is, of course, a recycling facility. And that’s the big secret, your dutifully shredded papers are taken to be recycled into new products. Please don’t hold your applause.

In all seriousness, this is a very important aspect of the document shredding process. While some would be satisfied with simply having their information destroyed, it is a large initiative in the shred industry to support sustainability efforts. With paper usage maintaining a historic high, it is more important than ever to begin reducing our impact.

When paper finds its way into the landfills, it causes them to fill up much faster then they should. Once it reaches capacity it must be closed and new ones open elsewhere. Furthermore, the more paper that is wasted, the more trees that will have to be cut. The paper industry has a large impact on the environment, consuming large amounts of power, oil, water, and of course trees. Recycling even one ton of paper can save 17 mature trees, 7000 gallons of water, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil, and 4100 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

As you can see, sending paper shreds for recycling has a big impact. Of course those shreds end up being used in new paper products which get sent back out into the world. And that is ultimately the fate of your shredded papers. If this sounds like a fate you’d like to consign said papers too, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

September is right around the corner, whether you can believe that or not, and that means a new school year will be starting soon, in whatever form that takes. Due to the abrupt onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools and other educational institutions were forced to shut down suddenly. This can easily lead to many of these places falling behind on their information shredding efforts, and with the nearing of a new year, it is time to get back on it if they haven’t.

Getting Back In The Groove

For starters, if you’ve fallen way behind during this whole period, you need to pick up where you left off. Hopefully you were on the ball leading up to the closure, but if you weren’t, it is time to get caught up. Let’s start with getting you back on track.

As awful as it sounds, those who are in the business of stealing private information to use for identity theft, or other nefarious purposes, seek out student records. Using those records they could accomplish a number of horrible things, all of which can have negative effects on the students going forward. Imagine applying to your dream university, only to be rejected for bad grades, or misconduct, that you never did. How do you prove your innocence? You could be facing a hard uphill battle for years to come in an attempt to clear your name.

This is why it is critical for educational institutions to be vigilant in how they handle student information. The first step is keeping your filed records secured, no matter what formats they come in. It is a big responsibility, but it is one that needs to be taken seriously.

Staying on top, or getting caught up as may be the case given the circumstances, does not have to be difficult. Having a good document management system in place is the ideal way to start. For those that do, and are at the point where it is time for destruction, the options are plentiful:

Document Shredding – This will destroy your paper records beyond any means of recovery. No need to sort out staples, folders, paper clips, etc. Everything will get chewed up in equal measure.

Hard Drive Destruction – For information stored on hard drives, you need to make sure to physically destroy them. If you don’t do this, there is every chance that data recovery programs can be run on it to retrieve information you’d rather be lost. Physical destruction ensures that nothing is able to be recovered.

It’s best to get back in the groove before the new school year begins, however that looks like, and there’s no time like the present.

If you take a gander at the various blogs and articles out there about shredding you’ll know that a lot is said about shredding paper and destroying hard drives. It’s all in the cause of promoting information safety of course, and it is good advice to follow. Sometimes though the focus on paper and hard drives is too narrow, and we forget to look at a few other places that do require attention. After all, paper and hard drives are not the only mediums of storing information, though some of them have gone extinct.

Older Media

It wasn’t so long ago that a lot of information was being stored on other kinds of devices. While these days it seems as if it is all mostly being done through digital means, be it on data clouds or computer hard drives, older forms of media are still floating around out there. You need to keep these in mind, and consider doing something about them so you aren’t leaving some information vulnerable to theft.

Firstly, CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray, etc are still all too common these days, and many of us still have a stack of disks sitting around somewhere. Do you remember everything that they contain? Probably not, even if they are only old photos, are you sure you want to take a chance that something extremely sensitive isn’t on them? Going back a bit further, does everyone remember magnetic tapes? Those old cassette tapes and VHS tapes may be mostly long gone, but they still float around, and don’t forget that credit cards still have them.

Let’s turn the clock back further: floppy disks. The great grandparent to disks, usbs, and other modern storage devices. As unlikely as it seems, there are still those who have these old friends collecting dust somewhere with absolutely no idea what’s on them. Though they may be old and forgotten, their data is still accessible. In the age of smartphones it is easy to forget about the older style cell phones we use to tote around. Though limited in capabilities when compared with today’s standards, they did have data storage capabilities.

What Can Be Done?

So how do you handle these? The procedure is the same as if you were dealing with a modern hard drive. Complete physical destruction of the devices will ensure the data is destroyed and beyond recovery. All material will then be sent for recycling into new products in support of sustainability efforts.

Simply reach out to the shredder of your choice, and get on top of your media destruction.

There you sit, surrounded by endless towers of papers, cluttered desks, and boxes overflowing with papers. You know that you should handle these; In fact, you’re required to by law, but shredding is hard, isn’t it? You have to organize your materials, filter out unwanted materials like staples and paper clips, then haul it all out to some facility way out on the edge of town and hope that they take care of the papers properly. Although, come to think of it, that’s not exactly true now is it?

In today’s age, there is no shortage of paper shredding service providers, offering a whole host of services to cover all the possible shred needs. This means there’s no shortage of companies you can get service from. This makes things a little easier for you, but what are the other issues holding you back still? Maybe, even though there are plenty of companies that shred, you have concerns about dragging all your stuff down to the shred facility.

This is another unnecessary concern, a fake hardship as it were. Any shredder worth their salt will have a fleet of shredding trucks at their disposal. These trucks are equipped with an industrial grade shredder that can chew through any material you throw into it. Staples, paper clips, folders, etc, all get munched up easily, meaning you have no need to sort through your papers to remove these items.

These trucks are dispatched to your location, and a uniformed staff member collects your materials. You don’t even have to do anything, just sit back and watch everything happen. From there, the shredding can be witnessed from a monitor on the truck. Between not having to expend any effort on your part, and being able to watch the whole process, you have peace of mind.

Shredding has never been easier in this day and age, thanks in many ways to the advent of the shred truck. The amount of effort you personally have to go through has been reduced. Though if you are being careless in how you manage your documents from the get go you may end up with a bit more hassle on your end. The best thing you can do is to have a good document management system set up ahead of time, or at least develop one before things get out of hand.

Reaching out is all it takes to get onboard with shred service, there’s no reason to delay any longer. Help, and information security, is just one phone call, or an email, away from helping you.

One of the most important aspects in handling private information is keeping it well managed. The whole concept of a good management system is the ability to create, share, store, and organize your information efficiently and securely. In order to do this, you need to do 3 things to really build out your system: create a plan, implement the plan, and then follow through. Simple right?

Building Your Document Management System

So it’s time for a management system, but before we can jump right into it, we need to create a plan. Plans are good, they provide a direction to travel, and guides on how to navigate through space. In order to make this plan, we first need to answer four important questions.

How Are Documents Created?

Every business has a variety of documents created, invoices, spreadsheets, emails, memos, etc. The best way to keep these things organized is to establish a few rules in regards to document creation. Do new documents need to be time stamped and dated, what do the procedures for sharing documents look like? Do you only use templates, and are these in house templates or 3rd party documents?

Big businesses will surely have a wide range of documents being created all the time, making it harder to keep track of everything, but also making it far more important that they do. Smaller businesses likely have only a few types or styles of documents being made, making their job a bit easier. Size aside, you’ll need to hash out how collaborating on documents is handled for the sake of consistency and efficiency.

How Are Documents Stored?

Once documents are created they need to be kept some place that lets you access them quickly when needed, but keeps them secure while in storage. Will you utilize an off-site storage facility, or will you develop a system for on-site storage. Off-site document storage typically comes with some extra costs beyond the base storage fee, including the time it takes to get people to look for and then pull out the documents that you want, but there are benefits. These places are usually designed with disaster protections built in, fire resistance for example, giving you some extra peace of mind. You may not be able to go that far when storing on-site, but you may decide it is a risk you are going to take anyways.

The key to success is good file management practices, creating a clear and easy-to-follow system. Think about what your plans to archive old documents are as well, how are you planning to deal with outdated documents?

How Will Documents Be Retrieved?

There comes a point when you will want to retrieve a document from storage, and having a good system in place will make this an easy process. It is closely tied with your filing practices, as how you organize your documents will affect how fast you can find what you need. Digital documents are typically faster to find, especially with good organization, and you won’t have to worry about returning it to the right spot. You also need to decide if documents need to be signed out, or some other kind of log kept in regards to access.

How Are You Planning To Secure Documents?

Now comes one of the big considerations: document security. Since documents are chalked full of private information, your security responsibilities are going to be large. Digital documents are going to require cyber security to protect them from attempts at data breaches. You also need to get old hard drives shredded when their time is done, lest you risk data theft. Physical documents need to be stored in a secure place, like a file cabinet or safe, preferably in a secured room, on a secured premise. Security tends to be one of the more expensive aspects of document storage, but it is a vital component, it’s worth spending some extra to get something good set up.

Implement And Follow Through

The best plan in the world is meaningless if you never put it into action, likewise a good plan implemented poorly can be disastrous. Figure out how exactly you will transition into this new process, and get everyone educated into the proper way of doing things. Be open to modifying the plan as you put it into action, you may find that some aspects are great on paper, but are a pain to practice.

Make a plan, put it into action, and keep up with it. That’s how you get started with your document management system.

Cyber attacks are a constant threat in this age of the internet, and despite the presence of a global pandemic, they are still on going in 2020. Thus far there have been a number of significant hacking attacks throughout the world. We’ll take a look at a number of the attacks that have happened so far, for a full list we would recommend looking at this resource. Now, let’s get into the cyber attacks of 2020 that have happened so far.

Cyber Attacks So Far

We’ll progress through the list in order from oldest to newest, just so we can end off with the most recent information fresh in your mind.

January 2020

• The Austrian foreign ministry was subjected to an attack that lasted several weeks, it is believed that a specific nation state was behind the attack.
• Around two dozen Pakistani government officials had their mobile phone targeted and infected by spyware that was developed by the Israeli NSO Group.
• The networks of two U.S municipalities were breached by nation state hackers, taking user information and adding in backdoor access for future attacks. As announced by the FBI.
• The UN revealed that their European IT systems were hacked into by an unknown but highly sophisticated hacking group.

February

• Malaysian government officials were targeted by Chinese hackers in an effort to steal data on government-backed projects happening in the area.
• Over 10 countries pointed the finger at Russia, accusing them of being behind a 2019 cyber attack against Georgia that affected thousands of websites for private, state, and media institutions.
• A failed cyber attack was launched against Mexico’s economic ministry’s network, but no sensitive information was taken.

March

• The CIA was accused by Chinese cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360 of being behind an 11 year long campaign of hacks against various Chinese industry, science, and government targets.
• Over 75 organizations around the world were targeted by Chinese hackers in a massive cyber espionage campaign that targeted manufacturing, media, healthcare, and nonprofit organizations.
• People involved with North Korean refugee issues were targeted by North Korean hackers.
• South Korean hackers used previously unreported software vulnerabilities in a cyber attack against North Korean targets as part of a large espionage campaign.

April

• Russian hacking groups planted articles on social media in an attempt to undermine the governments of Estonia and the Republic of Georgia
• Hackers, suspected to be from Vietnam, attacked Wuhan government networks in an effort to collect information relating to China’s COVID-19 response.
• Chinese cyber attacks against healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies, and the U.S. department of health surged amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Poland indicated that Russia might be behind a series of cyber attacks against Poland’s War Studies University in an attempt to spread misinformation and undermine U.S.-Polish relations.

May

• Officials in the U.S. accused Chinese hackers of attempting to steal research into a coronavirus vaccine.
• Germany found that a Russian hacking group associated with the FSB had hacked into, and compromised the networks of energy, water, and power companies around Germany.
• Norway’s state investment fund was compromised in an email scam that fooled an employee into transferring $10 million into the hackers bank account.
• Iranian hackers conducted a cyber espionage campaign targeting air transportation and government actors in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Always On Going

So long as the internet exists, cyber attacks will always be on going. While nations and big businesses have the resources for large scale and complex cyber security, smaller businesses and individuals may not have this luxury. There are ways to begin protecting yourself however, so don’t give into despair if this news sounds overwhelming. Use some common sense, take some precautions, and you’ll be giving yourself a good start on staying safe online.

Sooner or later your work office will open its doors once again, and work will resume in the regular ways. With many working from home for quite some time at this point, there has been plenty of time for workers to create sensitive business documents from their homes. While it is possible to get secure shredding at their homes, many may not be in a position to do so at this time. This of course creates some holes in your company’s business management process, but there is a way to quickly compensate for this when the office opens again.

Opening Day Office Purge

When the time comes, direct your employees to bring all the business records they created at home to the office. Make arrangements to have a document purge happen day 1 or 2 in order to be as secure as possible. Reacting quickly in this way ensures that nothing needing immediate shredding falls through the cracks. Also, if anything was forgotten when the office closed down you’ll be taking care of it right away. There is no need to worry about possible workflow interruptions to your operations as they restart, as purge service is designed to be in and out with minimal disruptions to your office.

Why Purge Vs Recurring

While many offices sign up for a recurring service, and you should as it’s a great way to keep on top of document destruction requirements, we realize that for many businesses that are just reopening it may not be a practical step for them yet. Purge service was designed from the ground up to accommodate those whose shredding needs are not as frequent as others, or who don’t have the budget for regular shredding. In this time when many have had to close up shop for several months, every penny counts right now.

There is also no need to worry about the job being too small or big for the scope of a purge. We might be in and out, but that doesn’t mean we’re only looking at the small and quick jobs. Everything is on the table, no need to concern yourself.

Getting A Purge

Setting up a date for a purge is as simple as reaching out to us and letting us know when you would like it. We recommend doing this as soon as possible so you get the best chance of getting the work done on day 1 of reopening, but as we mentioned earlier, doing it a little after should be okay as well. Just don’t leave things for too long. You are still obligated to follow compliance laws and maintaining information safety.