Privacy Protection is Important at All Times
Working from a home office is now common practice in the era of COVID-19. Whether you have a designated office space, a dedicated nook, or a floating work spot across multiple rooms in your home, securing your professional data and documents is not optional but necessary. Some organizations have a formal remote working policy that spells out the information security related do’s and don’ts in a work-from-home environment. Even an accidental deviation from the policy guidelines is essentially a matter of non-compliance, which may have severe repercussions on your business or career.
Certain businesses or organizations may not have a formal information management, preservation or destruction policy. However, even in the absence of detailed guidelines, you cannot afford to take privacy protection lightly. The experienced professionals at TITAN Mobile Shredding discuss the importance of securely destroying documents while working from home.
Suggestions to Improve Document Security in a Remote Working Environment
Handling confidential or sensitive business documents while working from home can be quite challenging. If you do not have a dedicated work storage space, you may be looking at a number of scenarios that potentially threaten the security of your physical records, such as:
- Stains, spills and other accidental damage by children or pets
- Losing or misplacing files and papers
- Family members mistakenly place confidential documents in the trash or recycling
- Home thefts which could accidentally lead to critical business documents falling in the hands of someone who may use them for illegitimate gains
- Planned corporate espionage, where competitors may be after some of the documents that carry your business trade secrets or copyrighted information
Here are some suggestions to improve your document security practices while working from home.
- If your company or business has a document management policy, read up all the aspects that apply to you and understand your legal responsibility in protecting the data and information you handle.
- Identify all such physical records that may be sensitive or confidential and require additional attention during usage, storage, and destruction.
- Evaluate the potential risks to these records and plan your security measures to prevent accidental loss, damage, or unauthorized access.
- Gather and file all loose papers and maintain neatly labeled files or folders.
- Store all physical records in a drawer, cabinet or some other safe spot, preferably under lock and key.
- Keep your work areas clean and clutter-free. Do not leave your work spot unattended when you have papers scattered around.
- Digitize paper documents by scanning and storing them on a high security cloud storage or external hard drive, if your business or organization allows that option. Take all necessary precautions to remain cyber secure while working from home.
- Collect all the redundant papers and store them in a secure location for shredding. Do not simply rip up documents and dump them in the garbage or recycle.
- For secure shredding, take your documents to a professional shredding facility in the neighborhood or call for a residential paper shredding service. You could also consider holding on to the records and keeping them safe until your employer allows you to drop them off at the workplace for a corporate shredding service.
Secure Residential Shredding Services by TITAN Mobile Shredding
At TITAN Mobile Shredding, our residential shredding services include a number of convenient options, based on your location and paper shredding volume.
- If you have 20 or more standard file boxes, take advantage of our affordable mobile shredding service, where we send our shredding truck to your residence.
- If you have smaller volumes or wish to get rid of your confidential documents more frequently, make an appointment with our shredding facility to drop off your files and folders.
- If you are not in a rush to get rid of the redundant records, then watch out for our monthly community shredding events at various locations in and around Philadelphia and the Greater Philadelphia Area.
As a NAID AAA Certified company, we not only address compliance with legislative matters pertaining to your industry, but also endeavor to keep you and our employees safe and healthy during the coronavirus pandemic. For this purpose, we have introduced curbside drop off services at our facility in Pipersville, PA, as well as all our monthly collection sites. We can also arrange to send you “Seal ‘n Shred” bags (one 12 gallon or two 6 gallon bags) to enable secure collection of confidential or sensitive documents that you need to bring for shredding. Our data destruction specialists accept hard drives and other media such as CDs, DVDs, tapes, or thumb drives for the safe and permanent destruction of your digital data. We issue Certificates of Destruction for all our services.
Ready to clean out your home office and destroy confidential or sensitive data and documents? Get in touch with the experts at TITAN Mobile Shredding. Call (866) 848-2699 or contact us online.
