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Shredding For Education Institutions

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.

August 29, 2020