If your business has any sensitive data from customers, clients or patients, you need to have a secure and safe way to get rid of that information. Finding the right secure document destruction services is critical to your success. Here are some things to look for when you are hiring a secure document shredding service.

Decide what kind of secure document destruction services you want. You can have this done at your business or an offsite location.

• Have your shredding done at another location. This is called “off site shredding.” The secure document destruction services comes to your place of business, collects all of your secure documents to their facility and they take care of the document shredding there. If you decide to go with an off site paper shredding company, there are some extra things that you need to do to make sure the confidentiality of your files is always maintained. This includes safeguarding them during their transport to the shredding facility and what happens before the files are destroyed at the facility. You need to know that the entire process is totally secure. One way to do that is to go with a company that provides video surveillance of the entire process. The paper shredding company also needs to be very strict about who has access to their facility.
• They can shred your files at your business. Other secure document destruction services will come to you. They do not destroy your files in your offices but have mobile shredding operations. Your files stay at your facility. One of the benefits to this kind of document destruction is that you can watch your documents being shredded. This should give you a higher level of confidence in the process and in the end result. The vehicles that are used for the document destruction have shredding compartments that are totally enclosed. You can see the bin tunnel, which is also totally enclosed. The importance of this is simple, none of your paper can blow away in the wind before they have a chance to be destroyed.

Ask about the kinds of equipment the secure document destruction services uses. The mobile shredding vans need to have state of the art technology that is full automated. These systems have been developed to be as secure as possible. These trucks should also have video surveillance equipment installed so that you can watch the entire process of destroying your files. The shredding equipment itself should be able to cut your paper files down to shreds that are about 2.5 inches by .75 inches. Shreds of that size are made to make sure no one can take your files and reconstitute them later. The shredding equipment should be able to handle staples, binder clips and paper clips. All of this will save your staff time and energy.

Look for a company that has good customer service. You want to know the secure document destruction services is going to be on time, be available to answer all of your questions and be quick about their turnaround time. If the company is not willing to take the time to answer your questions before you become a customer, you can bet that they will not have the time to talk to you afterwards. Pay attention to how responsive they are to your concerns. This is too important to go with a company that does not take customer service seriously.

Ask about the containers they use to dispose of your documents. Most secure document destruction services have secure lock containers that prevent any access to your documents before they are shredded at the facility. If you are not able to get an assurance that this is what the company uses, you should go to a different company. The last thing that you need is for someone to be able to access your confidential information while they are at an off site facility.

There are a lot of good reasons you should hire a secure document destruction services company to handle the shredding of all of your confidential files and materials. They provide shredding in a much more secure and safe way than you could ever do yourself.