SHREDDING
Lots of boys are fascinated by firetrucks, trains and airplanes and would like nothing more than a chance to get near one and maybe even tour one.
6-year-old Henry Mitchell is no different. He loves big trucks of all kinds and often runs out near the street to get closer and to watch them pass and work.
Shred truck pays a birthday visit
Last month, for his sixth birthday, Henry got to realize his dream and see one of these machines extra close. On the morning of Dec. 31, as he was celebrating with his friends and older brother at his birthday party, another big truck came down the road by his house. But instead of passing as most do, this big blue truck with a picture of a large black bear on the side lumbered to the side of the road and growled to a stop at the curb just outside Henry’s house.
And out ran Henry.
“Of course, big eyes,” said Henry’s mother, describing the reaction of her boy who had been sitting by a big window eagerly awaiting the truck’s arrival. “His eyes were big with excitement. He ran out immediately.”
The truck was a document shredding truck from RK Black Shredding. It had stopped there as arranged between an RK Black associate and Henry’s parents after the associate had heard of Henry’s fascination with trucks.
Shred truck delivers curb-side service, show … and smiles
Not only did Henry get a chance to see the truck up close, he got to get the grand tour as well.
“We showed him how everything worked. He got to sit in the cab and hold the steering wheel and honk the horn,” said Mike Kelly, Shredding Operations Manager for RK Black Shredding.
As each of the boys attending the party had been asked to bring a bag of documents to be shredded, Henry and his friends were able to see the shredding truck in operation. They watched through the truck’s monitoring screen as their records were destroyed.
After the demonstration, RK Black Shredding capped off the visit with a box of donuts which the boys promptly destroyed.
RK Black Shredding, in the business of bringing ease to people’s minds, ultimately seeks to bring smiles to people’s faces, especially if they are little boys.
SHREDDING
RK Black Shredding & Susan G. Komen: Allies against breast cancer
That’s why for more than two years, R.K. Black Shredding has partnered with Susan G. Komen of Central and Western Oklahoma to raise funds to help fight breast cancer and to increase breast cancer awareness.
Since program’s beginning, with the help of our shredding clients, R.K. Black Shredding has been able raise more than $3,000 toward stamping out this disease that has affected so many lives.
Naturally, we want to increase the amount raised to put even a greater dent in the disease and to reduce the number of its victims.
As October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, we want to remind you and, well, any business needing document shredding in the central Oklahoma, that you too can join this alliance against breast cancer.
RK Black Shredding mobile shredding unit with pink shred bins for breast cancer awareness.
Get a pink shred bin: Every tip is $10 against breast cancer
You can help shred breast cancer by shredding your documents under our “Shred for a Cure” prorgam. If you need document shredding services and want to join the fight, simply ask to be part of our program. We’ll provide you with a pink bin instead of or usual gray bin, confirming your commitment and your support to save lives.
All you have to do is fill the bin with your papers slated for destruction. Once it’s full, we’ll empty it. Each time we service the bin, $5 of your service fee will go to the local Susan G. Komen chapter, and R.K. Black Shredding will match that with another $5. That means that every time you fill a bin and we empty it, $10 goes to fight breast cancer.
What’s more? Your monthly invoice for our document destruction services will reflect your donation, allowing you to report it as a tax-deductible charitable donation.
It’s a win-win-win! Under the program, you get to protect your confidential information, fight breast cancer and save yourself some money at tax time, all with one tip of a pink shredding bin.
You’ll find the brightly-colored pink shred bin is a great conversation starter and an excellent opportunity for you to help spread breast cancer awareness. That on it’s own helps to combat the disease.
Join the fight!
SHREDDING
Sometimes in the document shredding business, certain questions come up — good questions that need to be answered. One of those inquiries is about how small the documents should be shredded.
There is no standard
The answer is, other than those set forth for governmental classified documents, there is no real standard. Government-approved high-security shredders, created for destroying top secret and classified documents, render an 8.5” x 11” sheet to 15,000 particles.
While impressive, this kind of destruction is rarely needed for business use, especially in the case of mobile shredding. Why? Because not only is compliance with such standards expensive and unnecessary, there are some other reasons — unique to mobile shredding.
Other points to think of when considering mobile shredding
First, regulations for document security only require confidential information to be destroyed to make it reasonably inaccessible and not able to be reconstructed.
With mobile shredding units, while each page may not be transformed into 15,000 pieces of paper, whatever is shredded is mixed with shredded material from other clients, resulting in the documents being “reasonably inaccessible” and irretrievable.
Second, government regulations on shredding specifications assume the shredded materials are not protected or controlled after the documents are destroyed.
Mobile shredding units, however, maintain control of all shredded materials until they are brought to a facility where they are combined and mixed with even more destroyed papers from other sources, and then baled and recycled, rendered these documents utterly unusable for purposes of data collection.
Furthermore, if a mobile document destruction service provider is NAID AAA Certified, as part of that certification the service provider is required to exhibit secure handling and control of the material after it is destroyed.
Summing Up
Considering the points above, for most organizations, the government standard for particle size for shredded documents is unnecessary and irrelevant — and grossly expensive, potentially costing more as much as 10 times the cost of a standard mobile shredding service.
Additionally, as RK Black Shredding is NAID AAA Certified, you can be sure your shredded documents are safe once placed in our custody and shredded at your location as you witness. Plus, as your documents will eventually be recycled into other paper products, you can be confident your information will be destroyed to pulp and fiber. You can’t really get any smaller than that.
If you would like any information on document shredding or our mobile shredding services, let us know. Click the red button below, fill out the form and send. We’ll get right back to you! We’re glad to help in any way we can.
About R.K. Black, Inc.
R.K. Black, Inc. is an Oklahoma City-based, family-owned leading provider of office technology solutions to businesses in Oklahoma and Kansas. We specialize in everything business technology from copier, fax, printer and scanner technology to document management, onsite paper shredding services, VoIP phone systems and managed IT support to video surveillance solutions.
If you want to learn more about us, feel free to explore the website, read our other blogs or click the button below to be contacted by one of our reps and tell you! Also, be sure to keep watching our social media channels on Facebook and Twitter for more business tips from our blog.
SHREDDING
While it’s clear you need your documents shredded, the question is whether you should hire a shredding service or buy an office shredder. Which is the better option?
The answer largely depends on what’s important to you, but in most cases we’ll say it’s better to hire a shredding service.
Here are three reasons why we say you would be better off hiring a shredding service and not buying a shredder:
Less Expense
While it may seem less expensive to make a one-time purchase and DIY your own shredding, you might be overlooking two major costs that are not so apparent at first, but will reveal themselves over time.
Expense in Labor
Time is money, especially when it comes to paid labor. If you buy an office shredder, you’ll need to have someone operate it and to feed it paper. Tasking someone to do this requires you take them away from other tasks that may require more skill and expertise and effectively you’ll have a misappropriation of funds, so to speak.
For example, if you’ve got several hundred pounds of paper to shred, with most industrial grade office shredders, it will take that employee at least a couple of hours to shred those documents. Do the math of their time spent shredding, their hourly wage, and the cost of not getting other tasks completed, and soon you’ll find yourself with an expensive in-house shredding service.
If you are already then paying for a shredding service, why not just outsource your shredding, keep your workers on task with what they do best, and hire a shredding company to do what they do best (shred paper) and do it in mere minutes, saving you labor costs? That is why we say when considering the labor associated with operating an office shredder, it’s actually cheaper to hire a shredding service.
Expense in Maintenance
When you buy a shredder, you become responsible for its maintenance. As you use the shredder, it will wear and as it deteriorates, it will become less dependable, will jam more and eventually will require downtime and repairs. Downtime means paper piling up, not getting shredded, creating a data security risk, and repairs mean money — money required to pay for parts and to compensate the individual conducting the repairs.
With hiring a shredding service, the maintenance is off your back. It’s not your problem. You get your documents shredded and that’s it. There is no concern for parts, repairs, downtime or security risks due to the downtime.
More Security
Hiring a shredding service ensures better security than what buying an office shredder can offer, especially with onsite shredding services.
Too much information for too many eyes
The documents you are shredding you want destroyed because they bear sensitive information, information you don’t want other eyes to see. Some of that could be payroll, human resources, future business planning or other kinds of private data.
You trust your employees, but does it bother you they may see their coworker’s salaries or other personal information as they manually feed documents to the shredder? Maybe it would be by accident that they see this or perhaps because they were curious, but you know you don’t want to them seeing that information. It could result in office conflict or even internal theft.
Accidents happen
Another factor is human error. As the saying goes “To err is human…” People are going to make mistakes. When it comes to using an office shredder, it’s very easy for those using the shredder to fail to shred certain documents, leaving your business open to internal conflict, theft or even a data breech.
HIPAA compliance
When it comes to HIPAA compliance, the law requires certain documents to be completely destroyed. In using an office shredder, you have no evidence showing your compliance and that the information was destroyed.
When you hire a shredding service, the person who drops the documents in the shred cabinet or shred bin is probably the person who works with and is entrusted with that information. This same person is the last to see it. The next time that paper sees light will only be briefly as it is being dumped into the hopper of an industrial truck-based shredder seconds before it is destroyed, leaving no space or time for it to be read by other eyes. Upon completion of the shredding job, your shredding service provider will issue you a certificate of destruction, admissible as evidence of HIPAA compliance.
Better for the Environment
If your company is one that seeks to be environmentally friendly, using an office shredder may not be the best way to go. You see, an office shredder only produces small amounts of shredded paper making it too much hassle for the amount handled for recycling facilities to process.
By going with a shredding service which naturally handles large amounts of paper which it regular hauls to partner recycling facilities, your paper will be recyclable, helping your company be that much more green.
?
Hopefully, these tips will help you make your decision on whether to use a shredding service or to buy a shredder for your document destruction needs. The important thing of course is protect yourself by destroying your sensitive papers.
Whichever way you decide, we can help you out as we are a NAID-certified shredding service provider and also a shredder dealer. Just let us know. We are here help.
SHREDDING
A common myth among small to medium-sized businesses is HIPAA compliance only matters for hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, healthcare providers and the like.
Unfortunately, if your company has employees, you probably hold information that falls under HIPAA guidelines. You have health information you are required to protect. If you don’t protect it, you could be subjected to fines that could push your business into the red.
But as a business, you are not only responsible for health information but also for other kinds of private data that, if in the wrong hands, could severely hurt you, your associates and your business. We’re talking about billing records, client lists, W-2s , W-4s, insurance enrollment applications and so on.
So what are the actions you should take as a business to protect your data and to be HIPAA compliant?
To answer this question, we sat down with Bridget Gatewood of Total Compliance Connection, an Oklahoma City-based human resources services provider, and together came up with these preventive measures businesses can take to protect their sensitive data.
Here are some of the tips we came up with:
1. Protect your private copied and printed material.
Do your human resources department and other associates share a copier? If so, you might consider devoting only one copier to that department so what happens in human resources stays in human resources. But if you are a small business and can’t do that, be sure you don’t leave private information on the glass after using the photocopier or on the tray after printing. Retrieve it right away, especially material carrying personal information like social security numbers and such.
2. Secure your copier hard-drives.
Did you know an image of every document passed through a copier is saved on its hard drive? That includes W-2s, medical insurance forms, identification cards, passports, workman’s compensation paperwork — everything. That’s why it’s so important to learn from your copier leasing company its policy concerning copier hard drives once the lease is up and the device is hauled away. Do they erase the hard drives before redeploying to the next client? Can you keep the drives when they take the machines? Do they destroy the hard drives? If the latter, they should hand you a certificate of destruction, verifying the drive has been rendered useless and your data is safe. Just so you know, as part of our standard procedure for preparing copiers for deployment to a new location, R.K. Black erases their hard-drives. If a client requests the hard-drives, we will give them drives for a fee to reimburse us for the cost of replacing the drive. Also, as part of the document destruction services we offer, we destroy hard drives on location, thanks to a unit purposed for that on our mobile shredding truck.
3. Watch your fax machine.
Much like the first tip above, if you and other associates share a fax machine, you might want to keep a close watch on the fax so you can grab the material as soon as it comes through. In addition, when using a fax machine or the fax function on a copier, make sure when sending personal information that only the eyes of the person meant to see it will see it.
4. Back up all of your private and personnel information.
Disasters happen and like other businesses here in Oklahoma, we know all about that. We’ve got tornados, micro-bursts, floods, blizzards and more recently, earthquakes. For businesses, that means all of those personnel files can in one second be safe and dry in a locked file cabinet and the next second, strewn about everywhere and open to the elements. That’s not even talking about fires and other misfortunes that may befall a business. That is why it’s so important to back up your private files, client records, etc.
5. Label and seal personal documents dropped in open office mailboxes.
If your workplace has open, unlocked mail boxes for your associates, when placing documents with personal information in those boxes, make sure you seal them in an envelop and label the envelope “Confidential.”
6. Implement a security policy for private document transportation.
This helps ensure private documents placed in transport from one person to another, either through a courier or, say, a fellow associate who just happens to be going that way, to get to intended destination in a safe and timely manner. You might consider requiring the delivering individual carry a sheet to be by signed by the receiver, confirming the materials arrived at their intended destination securely, much like how you sign for registered mail delivered by the USPS.
7. Never ever throw away private documents when time comes to dispose of them.
Destroy your documents. Shred your sensitive papers. Many companies have been greatly damaged by information discarded improperly, leaving sensitive information open to identity thieves, competitors and so on. Again, while those businesses handling health information will be fined under HIPAA, businesses not handling such information, but other sensitive documents can come under the hammer of the FTC. For example, in 2007 the federal agency fined a mortgage company $50,000 for tossing credit report information in a dumpster. FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majores reiterated the importance of proper document disposal, then saying “Every business, whether large or small, must take reasonable and appropriate measures to protect sensitive consumer information, from acquisition to disposal.” She continued to say that the agency “will continue to prosecute companies that fail to fulfill their legal responsibility to protect consumers’ personal information.” As mentioned above, R.K. Black offers a mobile shredding service where our clients can watch their documents get destroyed before their very eyes. We recommend always going with onsite shredding service as opposed to offsite due to these reasons.
8. Never leave private information unsupervised in an unsecured location.
This goes for paper files, computers, thumb drives, mobile devices, etc. A car, for example, is not a secure area — so don’t leave a banker box full of HR files or a laptop with private information overnight in your trunk. Your car could be stolen, broken into or vandalized, and that information taken.
9. Always password lock and encrypt your electronic devices containing confidential information.
Applying to the former and current points, you don’t want to place your company in the same boat as this hospital that was fined more than $1.5 million in 2011 after an unencrypted, password-protected laptop was stolen from an associate’s locked vehicle, exposing the health information of 9,497 individuals.
10. Lock your computer and secure your desk when you step away.
If handling private papers or information on your computer at your desk, make them inaccessible when you leave, even for a second. Make sure your computer is password protected. When you leave your computer, for a restroom or coffee break, let’s say, make sure the computer locks so no one can access it while you’re not looking. Any personal information on your desk, lock it away as well.
11. Mind your conversation and privileged knowledge.
Loose lips sink ships. Be careful not share private information to those whom it is not of their concern. This isn’t just about avoiding gossip, but is about considering the space and those around you when sharing information to even authorized personnel. Nurses have lost their jobs for sharing patient information to a doctor where another individual overheard. Use a private space. Close the door. Speak in low tones. By the same token, just because you know an associate is having surgery doesn’t mean that associate wants everybody else to know. Sometimes what happens in the workplace is a person undergoing treatment and coworkers think it might be a nice gesture to send a “get well” card or flowers. While well intended, the attention may be undesired and may in fact make for a more unpleasant experience for that individual. If you want to send a company, or department-signed card, make sure the associate is fine with everybody knowing.
12. When using public Wi-Fi, use a VPN or use your own mobile hotspot even the one on your phone, if it is so equipped. It’s very easy for hackers to “tap your line” so to speak, when you use public Wi-Fi. By using VPN when on public Wi-Fi, your connection is encrypted, blocking outsiders from seeing your information.
Hopefully, you find these pointers helpful in keeping you, your business, your associates and your data safe, secure and HIPAA compliant.
SHREDDING
It’s that time of year again and soon you’ll be zipping W-2s and 1099s through your postage meter and into the mailboxes your associates.
Yep, the holidays are over and tax season is just around the corner. And as that April 15th deadline approaches, so does that glorious date when you can fulfill those New Year’s resolutions to lose weight (well, you knew you were talking about the paper weight in your filing cabinets, but nobody else needs to know that, right?) and to be more organized by getting rid of those business records that have fulfilled their IRS retention periods.
Or maybe your organization follows a document retention schedule and this is where your schedule begins. Kudos, to you, by that way, for adopting a retention schedule as this is a business best practice!
But before you head to the local big box store to buy a shredder or call your local shredding company, here are some things you may want to know.
How much paper do you have to shred?
How much do you have to shred? That’s the question a shredding company will ask. Just like how stepping on the scale gives you an idea of how many pounds you have to shed, it’s a good idea to take a look at what you have and make an estimate of what you have to destroy before you make the contact.
Here’s how to accurately guess how much paper you have to shred:
A grocery bag or a packet — If you’ve got a few packets to shred, you’ll probably be fine to shred them in your small office or home shredder. But if you’ve got a paper grocery bag, a banker box or more full of paper to be shredded, you might consider saving yourself some time (because time is money) and let a shredding company do it for you.
A standard banker box — typically about a foot wide, just over a foot long and about 10 inches deep — holds about 30-35 pounds or 2,000 to 5,000 sheets of paper.
A large legal file box — about 15 inches wide, two feet long and just over 10 inches deep — holds around 50-60 pounds or 4,000 to 5,000 sheets of paper.
So with these amounts in mind, you should be able to look at your files destined for destruction and give a fairly accurate estimate how much paper you have to shred.
How do you want your documents shredded?
This answer is largely dependent on how much you have to shred, how much you want to pay, how much you time you have to complete the job and when you need it done.
If you have a small amount of shredding, a small budget and lots of time, as suggested above, go on ahead and go the DIY route and shred it yourself — if you have a shredder already.
Otherwise, here are the options offered by most shredding companies:
Drop off shredding services — Some companies allow you to stop by at their location and drop off your documents to be shredded. They will store your documents in a locked container until they shred them. They will typically charge a set rate per pound, per box or per bag. As the amount to be shredded is small, the total amount you’ll have to pay will be small as well and it could be money saved from buying a shredder or time saved you could spend … I don’t know … jogging.
Offsite shredding — With this kind of service, the shredding company will arrive to your location with a van or box-truck and haul your documents — typically a load as large as you would have a mobile unit shred service — to a shredding facility where they will shred it for you. Because they won’t have to shred it on your time schedule but when they have enough paper to warrant operating their plant-based shredder, they may not charge you as much as they would for onsite shredding. Though cheaper, this option is less secure than mobile onsite shredding as it may not allow you to witness your papers being destroyed and leaves you and your information vulnerable to whomever handles your documents from the time those documents leave your location to the time they are shredded.
Mobile onsite shredding — Some companies have mobile shredding units (trucks equipped with a bin chute and an onboard, typically hydraulically-powered shredder) that will shred your documents at your home or office. These typically handles jobs bigger than what you would do for drop-off service, usually enough to fill a bin — around ten banker-boxes or 300 pounds of paper. As the amount shredded is larger, the price is lower per pound than drop-off service and is charged by the pound. Besides the convenience of curbside shredding service, the advantage with this option is you can witness your sensitive information being destroyed and rendered unusable. This option is the most secure of all shredding service options.
What kind of service do you need?
Especially when it comes to onsite and offsite shredding, shredding companies typically want to know if your shred job is a one-time deal (a purge) or if you are needing ongoing, scheduled or route-based service.
Purge Shredding — Think of this as one massive, intense, post-Holidays diet and workout routine where you really need to shed some pounds … and fast, you know, before you go on that Caribbean cruise. This is like if you are spring cleaning, undertaking an annual document clean-out or your project is just a one-time occurrence. In this case, you will likely be ordering what shredding companies call purge service. In this case, they will show up on a scheduled day and either haul away all of your files (if doing offsite shredding) or, if using a mobile shredding service, will destroy your documents as you watch.
Scheduled Shredding — Think of this like going Paleo long term, getting a gym membership and actually using it … regularly. It’s now a life-style and you are keeping the pounds off for good. This is like if your office is constantly generating paper waste and records that you don’t want to go into storage but you want to be rid of as soon as is practically possible. This is also a great option if you’ve got a document retention schedule in place. For route or scheduled-based shredding services, shredding companies will either give you a locked bin or shredding cabinet into which your office would deposit its documents to shred and once a week, two weeks or three weeks or even once a month, your local shredder will then come by and regularly empty your bin or cabinets.
What shredding company should I use?
This depends a lot on how you answered the questions above and on what works out best for you — considering time, budget, shredding needs and amount to be shredded.
But probably the most important factor you will want to consider when comparing shredding companies is their security because it is for security’s sake you are choosing to shred the documents rather than toss them in the dumpster, right?
To this end, you want to make sure that whoever you chose is NAID certified secure. To carry this certification, a shredding company must be familiar and compliant with all shredding laws and standards as observed by NAID (National Association for Information Destruction). The organization annually and randomly audits its members for legal and best practices compliance to ensure client security.
Hopefully, this has been helpful in preparing you for your shredding task. If you have more questions about shredding, following are a number of links on many shredding topics and of course, feel free to contact us.
And just so you know, R.K. Black Shredding provides mobile onsite shredding services, route and purge service, to businesses throughout Oklahoma. We are NAID AAA certified secure and are a member of the Mobile Shredding Association (MSA).
Happy shedding and shredding those pounds (of paper)!
