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09.04.2024

Best Practices for Secure Business Shredding

Keeping confidential data secure should be a priority in every business. With various legislations in place to keep sensitive data protected, it is the responsibility of every business and employee to prevent any data breaches. One way to do this is to properly shred documents – in this article are some best practices for secure business shredding, including what documents you should be shredding and the best paper shredder for your business needs.

Create a document retention policy

You will likely have many documents that will need to be kept for a period of time before they’re destroyed. There are different rules and legislation applied to various documents. For example, in the UK, company accounts, tax returns, payroll, and financial statements for a business need to be kept for a minimum of six years. HR records, excluding payroll, need to be kept for a minimum of three years.

You may also have internal rules for how long you want to keep information and data from your clients and customers. Your company privacy policy may already detail how long you keep customers’ data for.

Consider what sort of documents and data your business handles regularly and set out how long each type will need to be kept for before it’s shredded. Make sure you have an effective archiving system in place so you can easily retrieve documents when needed, and it so it’s clear when documents have passed the retention period and so can be destroyed. The documents should remain secure while they’re archived, for example, in a locked room or cabinet, so the confidential data stays protected.

Understand what documents need to be shredded

Some documents you handle in your business will be able to go straight into the recycling, but many will need to be shredded. It’s vital that everyone who handles documents understands what needs to be destroyed and what doesn’t.

In essence, any document that contains confidential information about an individual or business will need to be properly destroyed. This will include details like bank accounts, financial records, phone numbers, full names, job titles, email addresses, home addresses, date of birth, etc.

The sort of documents that your business might handle that will need to be shredded include:

  • Employment contracts
  • Employee CVs
  • Payroll information
  • Bank and credit card statements
  • Printed emails
  • Account forecasts
  • Insurance records
  • Client lists
  • Business cards
  • Customer records
  • Internal business reports

Use the right paper shredder for your security needs

It’s important that your confidential documents are properly destroyed. Paper shredders have different security levels ranging from P1, low security, to P6, maximum security.

P6 is generally used for institutions that require the highest level of security, such as government and military organisations. In general, levels P4, P5, or P6 will be appropriate for most business use.

Cross cut shredders typically use a P4 security level, but some do operate at P3 (at Leitz, all our paper shredders operate at a minimum P4 security level). A cross cut paper shredder will cut the paper cross ways, so the paper comes out more like confetti. This is better for data protection than strip cut shredders, which typically only cut the paper lengthways into long strips.

Cross cut shredders at a P4 level cut the paper into smaller parts, which means it’s much harder to rearrange the paper and read what was on it. Generally, a P4 cross cut shredder will shreds the paper 400 times, whereas a P3 shredder cuts the paper 200 times.

Micro cut shredders typically operate at a P5 or P6 security level. The paper will come out of a micro cut paper shredder in tiny pieces, which makes it extremely difficult to put the paper back together. A P5 micro cut shredder will shred 2,000 times per page, and a P6 will shred 6,000 times per page.

Leitz has a variety of office shredders, including heavy duty paper shredders and small office paper shredders, ranging from P4 to P6 security level, so you can find the right shredder for your business needs.

Create a shredding routine

Your shredding routine should include your archived documents as well as the paperwork that you use day-to-day that needs to be shredded. For your everyday paperwork, you should make sure to destroy it regularly and prevent it from piling up. The longer that documents are allowed to amass, the higher the risk of a data breach.

You should ensure documents that will need to be shredded are kept separate from paperwork that doesn’t contain confidential information and can just be shredded. It can be helpful to have separate trays or bins for documents for shredding and documents for recycling, either in communal areas or on each employee’s desk.

Remember, if you’re not shredding documents straight away, confidential data will need to be kept secure while you wait to shred it. This might include keeping it in a locked bin or cupboard.

For your archived documents, you will need to set a regular time when documents are destroyed. It may be that you check the archive records every month or every quarter to see which are ready to be shredded. How regularly you check will depend on how many documents you have archived – the more you have, the more regularly you might want to shred those that have passed their retention period.

Remember to destroy digital documents too

You should remember that your digital documents will need to be protected in the same way as your paperwork. So, any file that has confidential information on it will need to be properly destroyed when it is no longer required.

If you handle highly sensitive data, you could look for software that essentially “shreds” digital documents, so they can’t be recovered. For regular business use, properly deleting the file should suffice.

Files held on hardware, such as USB drives, files will also need to be destroyed. Your IT team may be able to effectively wipe storage devices for you, but if you are concerned about data being retrieved, you can physically destroy the device to keep the data protected.

 

Leitz has a huge range of paper shredders for the office and home, to keep you working securely and protect your data.

Read more about paper shredders and data protection:

What are the Best Paper Shredders for Home Use?

What is the Best Heavy Duty Shredder for Your Office?

Data Protection and Working from Home: Tips to Work Securely