Excess Paper? Shred It And Forget It

What level of security do I need? “You probably need a pretty high level for insurance,” says Sacksteder. While lower security-level strip cut machines may be fine for some offices, crosscut or confetti shredders (which cut strips both horizontally and vertically) offer a higher level of security, she notes.

Is there anything besides paper that I want to shred? Such things would include paper clips, staples, credit cards, diskettes and CDs that contain data.

Once buyers have answered these questions, they must choose between light-duty, medium-duty and heavy-duty machines, depending on how much use they expect the machine to have. “At home, you dont need a high-performance machine,” Sacksteder says, “but insurance agents might need a pretty high level of performance.”

Personal shredders for home use and very small offices (up to 5 people) may range in price from $15 to $390, Sacksteder says. A commercial-level shredder suitable for an office department (6 to 10 people) would be at the upper end of that range. Higher-level shredders for larger operations may be priced from $500 to as much as $6,000, she adds. Such machines will typically offer more sheet capacity (as much as 21,000 pages per day), while high-security shredders will produce smaller confetti and may also be able to destroy floppy disks and CDs.

“Shredders are good,” says Slawetsky. “For $15 each, you can be a sport and get one for everybody in the office.” As to what kinds of things should be shredded, he recommends that users ask: “Would I be compromised if this showed up on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow?” An affirmative answer means the paper is a candidate for the shredder.

Slawetsky also points out that shredders need to be conveniently located in an office in order for people to use the machines. “If a shredder is not right thereon the wastebasket, for exampleyoure not going to use it,” he states.

For offices that have large volumes of paper that need to be quickly destroyed, commercial shredding companies are available to do the job. One such firm, All About Shredding of Mechanicsburg, Pa., allows customers to deposit confidential material into locked security containers. On a regular schedule, the company picks up the containers and shreds the contents into “unrecognizable bits.”

According to the All About Shredding Web site, “What takes an office shredder 10 hours, we destroy in 15 minutes for pennies per pound.” They add that this saves time and enhances productivity by allowing employees to avoid spending time shredding documents.

The Web site states that other materialspaper clips, three-ring binders, cassettes, microfiche and floppy disksalso can be destroyed via the service. Upon request, the company will even certify in writing that all of a customers documents were completely destroyed.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, April 30, 2004. Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.