While it isn't heavily emphasized in
the news media these days - there is much security lost on a regular basis
through the careless handling of paper.
Even utility bills in this day and age can
leave identity thieves with plenty of information necessary in order
to pretend to be you, one of your family members, or one
of your employees.
The paper that is innocently thrown away from homes and businesses
each and every year provides those who would steal your identify
with the ammunition to do just that.
Unfortunately, identity theft doesn't begin to cover the nightmares
that can be experienced by allowing slips of paper to fall into the
wrong hands. Many major enterprises have fallen victim to near
disaster, which might have been minimized by simply shredding
classified or private internal documents. |
|
While this is by no means meant to
condone paper shredding to cover up crimes and misdeeds it does show the power that paper truly has, particularly in the
'Information Age' in which we live.
Paper remains one of the most
effective and convenient ways of exchanging information with large
numbers of the population. Books continue to be printed on paper, as
do magazines, and quarterly reports.
_________________________
The average household needs
to have a paper shredder that
is big enough to handle the average volume of mail
coming
into the home each and every week.
|
Despite the fact that many
of us live and die by our computers, we still enjoy the
ability to take this information away from the computer
and enjoy it offline.
The thing to remember is that even though we can print
delicate and often confidential material from our
computers and take it along with us, it is imperative
that this information is not merely tossed in the
garbage.
It needs to be destroyed in a permanent way. |
The price we must pay for having
sensitive and personal information floating around on paper
documents is the necessity to shred those papers and remove the
information that could be used and abused by others for more
sinister purposes.
If you go through a lot of paper during the course of a business day
- documents
that need to be shredded and removed - it could be in your best
interest to enlist the services of a paper shredding company. Or, you may
want to invest in some serious document shredding machinery.
There are more reasons for this than the obvious security risks. Unlike information on
a computer, paper takes up an incredible amount of space. This means that unless a business has amazing storage
capacity some of the paper information is going to have to be
removed after a certain period of time in order to make room for the
new paper that is being generated on an almost daily
basis.
Those documents that need to be kept in perpetuity can often be
scanned to a computer then destroyed in order to make room for more
papers (you should check with your lawyers, however, before doing this
in order to determine the types of original documents necessary to have access to in case of litigation).
Information fraud and identity theft are problems that are not
limited to businesses and the corporate world.
The average household
needs to have a paper shredder that is big enough to handle the
average volume of mail coming into the home each and every week.
Anything that has personal information that doesn't need to be kept
on hand should be immediately shredded.
... Richard Rossbauer |
