Prevention via Systematic Risk Management

Certain areas such as finance, personnel, payroll, development, your firm's own specialist know-how and also customer protection are generally very sensitive. It's not only your own interests and data that are seriously at stake here but also those of your employees.

So carry out an individual risk analysis before buying new or additional equipment. Separate the high-security areas in your firm from the medium-security and less important ones. A walk around your business may give you valuable insight.

Who, How Much, How Often, How Secure?

It might be helpful to make a list of everyone in your company who generates material that needs to be shredded. For each person, determine how much they will need to shred daily, weekly, monthly, annually, and at what level of security. Also, what will they need to shred? Will it be all paper or will there be binders, books, cd-roms or diskettes?

Factors in choosing the right equipment:

Data security is the most important factor in choosing the right equipment. Also important is selecting the right performance to match the amount requiring disposal. A third factor is the type of application: do you require centralised or decentralised shredding? Frequently the optimal solution is a flexible mixture of deskside document shredders and central disposal, e.g. for older documentation.

Straight-Cut - for Large-Volume Shredding

Straight cut ranges from very secure 5/32" (3.8 mm) wide strips to a very fast 1/2" (11.8 mm) wide strips (primarily for older and less sensitive documentation).

Cross-Cut - For Maximum Security

Cross cut ranges from an almost unbelievable 1/32" x 1/2" (0.8 x 12 mm) to a fast and secure 5/32" x 2 9/16" (3.8 x 65 mm). An additional advantage here is that the particles can be pressed more tightly together than with straight-cut, and consequently the container needs to be emptied less often.