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As a business you might feel that shredding all your unwanted documents is an effective secure document destruction policy – but you’d be wrong. If you use a reputable secure destruction company, that’s a considerable improvement, because just shredding documents into strips isn’t secure enough. But secure document disposal isn’t just about paper – the world has moved on, and so much of our confidential information is now stored on hard drives and other electronic media.

The average business owner might assume that this unwanted data is also dealt with appropriately, perhaps they make sure to delete all the documents off someone’s hard drive when they leave – but again, this isn’t enough. Confidential information isn’t just about what’s in the “My Documents” file – it’s about the passwords that may be stored within the hard drive, along with credit card numbers and any other personal data. If a company upgrades all its computers, it may send the old hard drives off to be recycled, but the data is still on them somewhere. The directories and files might have been erased, but someone who knows what they’re doing could still be able to retrieve the information.

What’s the solution then? The best idea is to find a company that will physically destroy your hard drives for you. Once the hard drives have been reduced to tiny pieces, you can be sure that there’s nothing left on there for anyone to steal. The same companies will usually provide a complete document destruction solution, which will take care of your all company’s confidential information in the most secure way possible. If you’re simply shredding your documents, strips of paper in a bin can easily be reassembled – that’s why you need a professional company to destroy them for you.

There are also important environmental considerations with the disposal of electronic media. Out-dated technology is a huge landfill issue, so much so that the Environment Protection and Heritage Council have repeatedly raised concerns about the management of “e-waste” and in 2008 committed to finding a solution. With hard drive destruction, there is no bulky hardware taking up space in landfills – it’s reduced to a tiny volume, and the outer casings can be recycled. Likewise with secure document destruction, the end product is recycled, so the entire process is much more environmentally friendly.

Essentially, if a company is not considering online privacy to be a problem, then they may well find themselves in violation of the 1988 Privacy Act. A 2008 follow-up report to the Privacy Act, “For Your Information: Australian Privacy Law and Practice”, identified the internet as a huge potential privacy risk, saying “vast amounts of data are collected about internet users, often without their knowledge or consent”. If this information is being stored on a hard drive then that risk remains on the hardware. Once a company has finished with that hardware, it needs to be dealt with in the only truly effective way – destruction.

So, paper shredding is really just the tip of the secure document destruction iceberg. Poor policy decisions will leave companies vulnerable to attack – from identity thieves, hackers and competitors. Documents need to be destroyed rather than just shredded, and it’s becoming increasingly important to manage electronic waste as well as paper. Identity theft is on the rise in Australia – don’t let your company risk its business and its reputation because of a lack of effective data management.


For nearly 15 years Shred-X Document Destruction has been the leader in secure destruction services. We assist organisations in complying with the Privacy Act 1988 and its Amendments providing tailored services to thousands of commercial sites and households across Australia. Our secure destruction services include document destruction, digital media destruction (hard drives, CDs, credit cards), archive box cleanouts, and uniform destruction to name a few.