How to protect personal data. Shredding services for offices

Personal data protection and shredding service for offices

Millions of peoples personal data is everywhere. It exists on paper as well as on electronic devices such as computers, hard drives, CDs. It is very important for companies which deal with this kind of sensitive information made sure that it is correctly stored, dealt with, and most of all that it is protected against any unwanted situations.

In recent times in the UK, as in all European countries everyone who is responsible for using personal data must follow rules called ‘data protection principles’. The information must be used in adequate, relevant way and only limited to what is necessary.

Data Protection Act was first composed in 1984 and it defines how our personal information is used by businesses, organizations or the government. The main point of the Act was to protect individuals against any misuse of abuse of any information against them. It was later updated in 1998 and replaced in 2018.

What counts as personal data?

Personal data is simply any information that is clearly about a particular person. As long as we can identify individual it is personal. And let’s not forget people can be identified by information other than just their name and address. It can be anything from salary information, contact details, personal health details, information related to what kind of work benefits specific person have, what hours someone works, email address, computer IP address and many more.

Data shredding services

There comes time when companies have to destroy personal data information about their clients, employees or any other person because they have no more rights to hold on to it, or they simply update all details into devices and need to destroy paper based data.

It is their obligation to do it safe and secure. Bigger organization hire professional companies who deal with destroying any kind of personal data whether paper based or on device.

On the other hand most of the small businesses with one office simply hire office clearance companies which offer services such as data shredding, paper shredding, hard drive shredding.

Office clearance companies upon successful completion of shredding service are providing a client with certificate of destruction. This document confirms all the details regarding the destruction of documents. In some cases may be required for insurance purposes. This kind of certificate is important as it protects owner of data as well as shredding company by confirming that the data sensitive material has been destroyed and disposed of responsibly.

Good advice for companies is to regularly maintain filing cabinets and securely dispose of old documents. These helps to minimize risk of personal data being accessed by unauthorized person.

Keeping old documents with sensitive data can be very risky, and possibly even resulting in identity theft, fraud, financial loss, damage to reputation.

You want to get rid of some old documents, hard drives or CDs containing personal information about many individuals simply call office clearance company and ask about data shredding service and make sure to check if they provide certificate of destruction. It’s that easy.

While you clean up some papers' office clearance company can also help you with other things like old office furniture clearance, destroyed or unused electronic office equipment clearance. They priority would be to reuse what is good or recycle what they can.