by: D. David Dugan
http://www.allstarshredding.com
© 2006
Why should document security be so important to me? What exactly
is it anyway? These are just a couple of questions you might have
when someone mentions document security to you. With today’s
technology, thieves are getting smarter and attacking both large
and small businesses.
Where it used to only be financial institutions,
security firms, and those working on government contracts that
had to worry about document security, now it involves everyone.
Even if you don’t own a company, document security is important
to you as an individual.
Ever hear the phrase, “One man’s trash
is another man’s treasure”? Well in today’s world,
your trash is treasure to identity thieves, con men, corporate
spies, forgers, blackmailers, and others. What you throw in the
trash can get
Identity thieves today can find information on
documents, bills, canceled checks, and other items that you throw
away. Sometimes they use that information to apply for credit
cards in your name and other times they can simply use technology
to make a duplicate of the credit card you already have. Most
stores don’t even check ID when taking a credit card, so
once a duplicate is made, they are in business.
Con men need only to learn a little bit about
you in order to cook up some scheme involving you. The personal
information in your letters, bills, and other documents can give
them all they need to con you into believing they are someone
other than who they really are. The personal information they
obtained from your documents enhances their story to make it believable.
Forgers enjoy the documents you throw away even
more, since you probably signed some of them and they now have
a copy of your signature. However, copying your signature is not
the only definition of forgery. They can take canceled checks
and make a new checkbook with all the proper numbers. They can
forge other documents and do a lot more damage than you might
think.
Corporations make big money. Not everyone who
works for or runs a corporation can be trusted to be ethical,
as we have seen with all the recent scandals involving big corporations.
Some corporations use spies to learn what their competitors are
up to. This is so common today, that some don’t even think
it is unethical. They see it as a business necessity.
That means document security for your corporation
is now a business necessity you have to take very seriously, if
you haven’t already done so. Your competitors may not hesitate
to obtain documents from your company in any way possible. They
may use bribes, go through the trash, have the trash hauled to
them directly, or simply sneak in and take them.
This is not just some stuff from a spy novel.
Corporate spies get paid big money for the information they can
get from the documents they can steal or “find”. You
have to take document security seriously, especially where your
plans will only be successful if kept secret until you can legally
protect them. If it involves intellectual property, document security
is even more important.
Don’t think this leaves you out if you only
own a small business. If your ideas are patentable, copyrightable,
or trademarkable, then your document security is important as
well.
Even if you don’t plan to patent, copyright,
or trademark anything, your financial document security is still
very important. A thief knows as a small business owner, you probably
don’t have very good security for your documents. Some thieves
especially target small businesses because they are much easier
targets.
Well, now that you know document security is
important for various reasons, what do you do about it. How can
you be sure you have a good plan for document security and document
disposal?
There are several options for you, each depends
on your specific circumstances. There are companies that are specifically
in the business of document security for large and small businesses.
They actually come to your business and do all the shredding and
document disposal. This is one of the most convenient ways of
being sure your documents are destroyed properly.
Is document disposal all I need to know about
document security? The answer is no that is only the beginning.
It all depends on what type of company you run.
Do you allow your employees to take sensitive
documents home with them? Do you allow them to photocopy anything
they want with no record of what they copied? If you are a financial
institution, do you use new Pantograph methods for your documents?
Many of the old Pantograph methods no longer stop today’s
thieves from copying your sensitive financial documents.
There is a lot more to document security than
just shredding documents and disposing of the material securely.
I plan to address more of those methods in future articles about
document security. In this article I just wanted you to see that
everyone needs to take document security seriously.
