According to a data breach study sponsored by IBM, every confidential record that is lost or stolen costs a company around $150. This expense includes the loss of business, the loss of the company’s reputation, and the cost of investigating and repairing the damage. For a company with hundreds or thousands of financial documents and customer records, this can add up to millions of dollars for a single data breach. With such high stakes, it's not enough to spend your information security budget on fortifying your systems against cyber-attacks. You need to keep an eye on every vulnerable point that could compromise your business' security.

At PROSHRED® Tampa, we want to inform our clients about the various risk factors that impact their information security and provide tips on the best ways to properly protect your sensitive information.

Why Businesses Should Protect Their Physical Documents

In the age of digital information, businesses often rely heavily on computers and electronic storage to keep track of their important information. However, paper documents can also be a valuable source of data, and they’re just as vulnerable to theft as their electronic counterparts. If a physical document is stolen, the information it contains can be accessed by unauthorized individuals. This can harm your business’ reputation, your customers’ security, and your revenue. Additionally, if confidential information is leaked, it can put your employees at risk of identity theft or fraud. Mishandling physical documents can be just as harmful to a business as mishandling their digital counterparts.

paper shredding

How to Protect Your Physical Information

The safety of your business’s physical documents is important to protect not only the information contained within them but also your business as a whole. Luckily, there are a few simple tips you can take to help protect your documents from theft.

  • Store your documents in a secure location, such as a locked filing cabinet, safe, or room. This makes it harder for thieves to access your documents.
  • Limit access to the documents to only the employees that need the information. Keep a master list of all the employees who have access to the documents and require them to fill out a sign-in form when retrieving a document.
  • Invest in document shredding services. Throwing away your documents puts them at risk and most office shredding machines shred documents into easily recoverable strips of paper. Professional shredding services are the best way to properly dispose of your sensitive paperwork.

By taking these simple steps, you can help keep your business’s physical documents safe from theft.

Why Businesses Should Protect Their Digital Files

In the modern business world, digital information is more important than ever. From customer data and financial records to proprietary designs and trade secrets, businesses rely on a variety of online tools to store and manage their information. However, this digital data is also highly vulnerable to theft and misuse. Hackers and cybercriminals are constantly developing new ways to gain access to sensitive information, and even seemingly innocuous mistakes can lead to serious security breaches. That’s why businesses need to take steps to protect their digital information. By investing in robust security measures and implementing strict policies governing access to data, businesses can safeguard their most valuable assets and ensure that their operations run smoothly.

Electronic-Recycling
Hard Drive Shredding

How to Protect Your Digital Information

Data breaches have become all too common in recent years, and it’s become essential for businesses to take precautions to protect their business. When it comes to protecting your digital information, there are a few simple steps you can take.

  • Create strong passwords for all of your accounts and update them regularly.
  • Encrypt all of your sensitive digital information to protect it from hackers.
  • Limit access to confidential information, so that only vetted employees can view it.
  • Implement a comprehensive backup plan to ensure you can quickly recover information after a data loss.
  • Utilize a hard drive destruction service to securely destroy old electronics that might contain confidential information.

By taking these steps, you can help protect your business’s digital information from data breaches that might harm your company and customers.

Choose Proshred® Tampa for Your Information Security Needs

At Proshred® Tampa, we understand the importance of information security. That’s why we offer a range of services to help you protect your data including document shredding and hard drive destruction services. Our state-of-the-art shredding equipment can quickly and efficiently destroy sensitive documents, and our hard drive destruction services provide a permanent solution for data security. When it comes to information security, you can trust Proshred® to get the job done right. For more information on our services or to learn more ways to protect your company’s confidential documents, contact us today.