Confidential Document Destruction
As a business owner, when it comes to your New Jersey company, regardless if it’s a mega corporation or a small startup, protecting yours and your staff members’ confidential information is critical. Over the past few years, identity theft is being a growing issue in New Jersey and across the United States, and confidential document destruction is a sure way to prevent this.
In 2014, 17.6 million American residents fall victim to identity theft crimes and when government and corporate databases are lost or stolen, nearly 100 million more residents have their private, personal information put at risk of identity theft. In addition, 64.1% of reported identity theft is from the misuse of a credit card, 35% of an existing bank account and 14.2% of others personal, private information.
According to Statista, there were 1,473 data breaches in the United States in 2019 alone. As the national press focuses on hackers and digital crime, it’s easy to forget that small-scale theft can use more old-fashioned techniques.
Here are a few ways your New Jersey business can lower the risk of identity theft from happening.
Are You Protecting Your Staff and Customers?
Take a moment to think about how often you print out information during your typical workday. Perhaps you’ll print off a timesheet or contract, notice a typo, then print it again. Or, you’ll create a quote for a customer who then changes their mind about some details on the order, so you print off a fresh copy with the correct details. What do you do with the outdated documents?
If you throw them in the trash, you could be unwittingly putting people at risk of identity theft. You might think that there’s not much a person can do with that information, but names, addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers are all useful pieces of information. If the documents getting thrown away have other identifiers or financial information on them then they are an even more powerful tool for would-be scammers to build a profile of a person.
Ripping Up Documents is Not Enough
Some well-meaning managers encourage people to rip up documents before discarding them. While it’s true that a scammer would rather get their hands on an intact copy of a payslip or utility bill, the documents still have a use when ripped up by hand. If parts of the document are legible, then that’s enough for the scammer to forge a copy or just extract the information they need. The practice of rifling through bins is known as ‘dumpster diving’, and it’s lucrative enough to have persisted to this day.
Confidential Document Destruction Services
To combat dumpster diving, ensure that you have your documents and records properly shredded by hiring a professional shredding service in NJ. We recommend using a professional shredding company with shredders that “cross-shred” documents so that they cannot be pieced back together. Our confidential document destruction team will ensure that all of your documents and records completely destroyed using our state-of-the-art equipment. Make sure that you know where your documents are going and who will be handling them. We allow clients to watch their documents being shredded on-premises via a TV screen and recycle the shredded paper, giving you peace of mind that everything is disposed of in an ethical and environmentally-friendly way.
Strong Computer Passwords
Breaches into online accounts and computer systems are spreading fast. A key to small business fraud prevention is to ensure that your online accounts are hard to crack, make sure your passwords are complex. Use a combination of uppercase and lower case letters, numbers and computer symbols, such as $ # & *, and in addition, make sure your passwords are 8 characters long, at minimum.
Install Anti-Spyware Software
While using strong passwords is important, data hackers are still finding ways of breaking into your computer systems to take your information. Many hackers use spyware software to access your information on your computer. Use strong antivirus and antispyware software programs that will help protect your private data.
Regularly Review Your Bank Account and Credit Card Reports
For every statement with updates to your personal and business bank accounts and credit cards, take extra time to read over them over. Regardless how small the dollar amount could be on paper, if money was taken out of your account or charges or purchases on your credit card, contact your banking representatives right away. Review all information and reports on your statements each month and once you no longer need your reports, make sure you have them correctly destroyed, via professionally shredded.
Before you book a confidential document destruction service, we recommend that you sort through your documents and decide what you need to keep and what can safely be destroyed. Keep important documents in a secure part of the premises, and periodically destroy older, unnecessary documents. Once you build the habit it will give you peace of mind that your customer and employee data is secure.For more information on our confidential document destruction services, contact us at 1 (866) 747-3360.
