Are Document Shredding Services Safe?

Professional, certified shredding services are the safest and most secure way for businesses to dispose of large quantities of documents. Using a certified shredding company ensures that many safeguards and protective measures are in place throughout your disposal and destruction process.

These safeguards include:

1. Having secure locked containers inside your office to immediately dispose of documents
2. Having trained and experienced professionals handle your inventory
3. Receiving auditable chain-of-custody reporting and Certificates of Destruction
4. Shredding your documents with industry-approved equipment only
5. Having the shredded particles securely safeguarded and transported to be recycled into new materials.

By comparison, shredding in-house, or disposing of documents through other methods, leaves a business with many risks, including: (1) Having untrained and unattended employees handling old documents, (2) Not knowing exactly if or where old documents are being securely kept prior to destruction, (3) Not having auditable tracking of when documents were destroyed, (4) Not having a Certificate of Destruction from a certified vendor, (5) Not knowing where the shredded paper ends up after disposal, or if any shredded documents have gotten into the wrong hands to attempt to recover and steal sensitive information.

How The Shredding Process Works

Pre-Shredding Storage

Guard Docs provides all customers with secure-locked containers to store old documents prior to destruction. These containers come in various shapes in sizes to fit your office environment and to optimize for your shredding schedule requirements. Guard Docs’ secure-locked containers eliminate the risk of your sensitive information getting into the wrong hands during disposal.

The Actual Shredding

Guard Docs offers the most secure methods of shredding destruction with both its mobile shred trucks and off-site operations. The most secure methods of shredding include cross-cut and pierce-and-tear.

Post-Shredding Disposal

The post-shredding process is critical for continued security and environmental compliance. Post-shredding, the shredded particles are intermixed and bailed in a secure facility. The particles are then securely transported to a paper mill recycling facility, where they are converted into recycled paper products, which helps the environment.

Certificate Of Destruction

Certificates of Destruction are provided to the customer after a project as a guarantee of proof of destruction. Certificates of Destruction are necessary for organizations across many industries to ensure that sensitive customer and organizational information is being handled responsibly and destroyed properly.

Professional Shredding vs. Home Shredding

Professional shredding is superior to in-house shredding for many reasons. Professional shredding processes provide many safety measures during pre-shredding, actual shredding, and post-shredding steps. Professional shredding for large quantities of documents is also a faster, more cost-effective, and more convenient process compared to in-house shredding.

Mobile Shredding

Mobile shredding allows you to witness that actual shredding of documents with a trained professional operating a mobile shred truck at your location. This gives you an extra layer of assurance, seeing that the documents are shredded right in front of you.

Shredding Insurance

Professional shredding companies may offer additional identity theft insurance as added protection to customers. This is another key advantage to using a professional shredding company for your project.

Shredding vs. Burning

Shredding documents has many advantages over burning. In most cases, shredding is more cost-effective than burning, and is better for the environment. Burning paper causes pollution by releasing harmful gases and by resulting in ash which can contain toxic residue. Alternatively, shredded paper gets recycled and repurposed into new paper products. Shredding documents is also a faster process and can be a better guarantee of destruction. Burning large and thick quantities of paper may take a long time, and may leave sections of paper unburnt, similar to a fire burning through a log.