securing-recycling-process

ZircoDATA’s Document Shredding Lifecycle: Ensuring Secure Recycling

21 April, 2022By

In today’s business landscape, the importance of safeguarding private information cannot be overstated. Protecting confidential data is not only essential for reducing the risk of a data breach but also for building and maintaining trust with employees and customers.

While some organisations opt for traditional recycling bins to dispose of confidential documents, this approach, despite its environmental merits, leaves sensitive information exposed and vulnerable to potential security breaches. The inherent risks in this approach have contributed to the 56% of Europeans who experienced various forms of fraud between 2018 and 2020, with a significant portion falling victim to identity theft.

To gain a comprehensive understanding of these risks, it is vital to examine the lifecycle of a document disposed of through a traditional recycling bin and how it compares to the secure document shredding process offered by ZircoDATA.

Vulnerabilities of Traditional Document Disposal

The traditional recycling bin process contains several points where confidential information could be exposed to risk. These five areas present vulnerabilities:

  1. Sorting Facility: Documents are then delivered to a sorting facility where employees and volunteers prepare them for recycling. This stage allows for easy reading, sharing, and potential theft of sensitive information.
  2. Outdoor Recycling Bins: Caretakers transfer discarded documents to outdoor recycling bins for pickup, offering outsiders access to confidential information. These outdoor bins are often unsecured and inadequately monitored, providing criminals with a convenient means to access discarded documents.
  3. Rubbish Bins: Recycled documents are gathered in large plastic bags or bins, which can expose confidential information to anyone in the office building. Leaving these items exposed poses a potential risk
  4. Recycling Bags: Recycled documents are gathered in large plastic bags or bins, which can expose confidential information to anyone in the office building. Leaving these items exposed poses a potential risk.
  5. Trucks: Recycling professionals load intact documents onto trucks for transportation to sorting facilities, creating an opportunity for downstream handlers, including recycling workers and truck drivers, to access confidential information.

Although these documents are eventually recycled, businesses lack written proof of when and where their secure documents were destroyed. While the traditional ‘recycling bin’ process benefits the environment, it repeatedly exposes confidential information, posing a risk of data breaches. These five points of vulnerability underscore the importance of document shredding and the establishment of proper document destruction procedures.

Safeguarding Sensitive Data: ZircoDATA’s Secure Disposal Solutions

ZircoDATA’s data management shredding process has been designed with these five points of vulnerability in mind to ensure that confidential information remains secure throughout the document’s journey from disposal to recycling. Our process involves three straightforward steps:

  1. Our team of professionals empties the consoles and shreds all documents. The purpose of document shredding is to protect against unauthorised access to sensitive information. In the traditional document disposal process, malicious individuals can still access sensitive documents even if they have been manually torn. Shredding renders documents nearly unreadable. ZircoDATA securely destroys documents using the industrial technology, and organisations can arrange for on-site or offsite shredding.
  2. Employees deposit their confidential documents into a secure ZircoDATA console. Unlike the traditional document disposal process, where anyone in the office could access documents thrown into recycling bins, ZircoDATA secure consoles are locked and feature a bevelled slot to prevent unauthorised access to discarded documents.
  3. Subsequently, our team delivers the shredded confidential documents to a paper mill for recycling. Our customers enjoy the environmental benefits of recycling without compromising data security.

Protecting Your Information: ZircoData’s Data Security Solutions

Confidential document disposal extends beyond the removal of unneeded paper waste; it is also about safeguarding your relationships with customers, employees, partners, and the community. Proper document shredding policies and procedures shield your organisation from the numerous risks associated with traditional document disposal.

We follow a comprehensive six-step security protocol to ensure the safety of confidential information at every stage of the process.

Our fleet is GPS-tracked, providing us with real-time information about the location of your documents, and our containers and trucks are securely locked to protect information during transit. Our secure, monitored facilities further safeguard your information before it is destroyed. Upon completion of the process, we provide customers with a Certificate of Destruction to guarantee the proper destruction and recycling of their documents.

To learn more about our secure document disposal process and the document shredding options that suit your requirements, whether you run a small-to-medium business or a larger organisation, please do not hesitate to contact us.