There are many challenges that a smaller or medium sized business face that larger companies do not. These challenges are usually due to the fact that there are not as many resources or as large of a budget available. Business owners, small, medium, or large are expected to practice confidentiality. This is often an easier task for larger businesses because they can utilize specific resources to proper paper shredding services and dedicate entire IT departments to internet security. How then, as a small business, can you improve your business confidentiality and ensure that you are taking all of the necessary security precautions?

Outsource your IT services

The internet is especially at risk of data and security breaches. One of the most common data breaches includes identity theft. Identity theft is the single fastest growing crime in the nation, a $50 billion a year industry that continues to expand its reach. When identity theft occurs through your business, you can be held responsible for the damages incurred. For this reason, a secure internet connection and internet storage database is extremely important. Outsourcing your IT services can be an option for smaller to medium sized businesses that cannot yet have their own on site IT service department.

Equip the office with shredders

Many paper information breaches occur from employees carelessly leaving around customer?s information. They might lose track of confidential information or simply throw it in the trash. While many storage databases are moving entirely to the internet, a lot of identity theft cases still occur in paper form. Nearly 90% of identity thefts use information gained from print sources rather than those found online. This is likely due to the fact that people tend to be more aware and more careful when it comes to the internet. Equipping the office with numerous shredders, or even shredders in each office can remind employees to properly use these document shredding services.

Encourage customers to dispose of their paper documents

Many businesses provide customers with copies of their important and confidential documents. You can further cut down on information breaches and identity theft by also encouraging customers to properly dispose of their documents. According to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, Government documents and benefit fraud (34%) was the most common form of reported identity theft. Many customers are not aware of these risks and further informing them can significantly cut down on these breaches.

Schedule your shredding service days

You may not find it financially justified to have your own shredding services on site. However, there are many local shredding companies that offer document destruction services. The good thing about these document destruction services is that they are scheduled for a specific day, reminding employees and customers to dispose of their confidential information. Additionally, document destruction services can handle the secure disposal of items that may not fit into your shredding machines. Some of these documents include folders, large packets of confidential information, hard drives, storage devices, and USBs. On site shredding also makes it so employees never have to leave the building with confidential customer or business information.

Move to an internet storage system

Because the majority of identity theft occurs from paper documents, moving to an internet storage system could be beneficial. There are many cloud based, secure storage systems on the internet. You can also better monitor these programs with IT services. When a customer?s information is stolen, you have the ability to track down its source, whereas this is not always the case with paper documents.

Small businesses sometimes find it difficult to keep up with proper storage of confidential customer and business information. Document destruction services can ensure that you remember to dispose of customer information. It can also be helpful to remind customers to do the same. Eventually, you will want to move to an entirely internet based security system.