John Sutherland: It's Good To Shred

Do you know the meaning of the word ‘shred’? No, the word is not related to any breakfast cereal or marmalade as it was considered about twenty years ago. These days the term ‘shred’ means destruction of the documents. Everybody is shredding the documents. Now the questions is,” why we should shred?”

The big business houses, companies, small and large organizations all deal a lot of personal information of their clients/cutomers or members. This information may be sensitive and remains mainly on the paper documents, CDs, floppies or other storage media. Where can these companies or organizations store the junk of this material that consists of vital and sensitive information of the individuals.

These organizations can easily mange to handle the documents that are presently needed for their day to day operations. But it is always a tedious work to handle the documents that have been dealt with and need to be thrown in dust bins. Is it safe to throw the documents that contain personal and sensitive information of individuals? Everybody knows that it is not safe. There has been a steep increase in the identity theft cases.

Governments have to introduce laws for the destruction of the documents containing sensitive information like credit card details, bank account numbers and other personal information. One of such laws known as FACTA Law has made it mandatory for all companies having more than one employees to have document shredding machines in their premises.

The case of Enron firm has also taught a lesson to all – if you are wise, you shred. The case of Enron firm has remained in the headlines for “Death star” and “Fat boy” scams for several days which made clear the importance and usefulness of paper/document shredding.

In the modern life we use Photostat machines, FAX machines and printers. All these equipments produces a mass of documents. Emails also add to this. The information produced by these machines is used all over the world in our day to day life, but it can also be misused easily. The documents produced by these machines may be valuable record for us, but may also be used as evidence against anybody.

It is considered a wise task to shred all the documents when not usable. There may be policy of the organization or department in this regard. Most of the companies, organizations and offices keep such documents safe for a stipulated time period before shredding.

Shredding is a big business these days. You may find all type of shredding machines in the market which are capable of shredding documents of all types may it be a paper document or may it be in a digital form on any CD, DVD or floppy. The estimated business of shredding machines is about $1.5 bn and is increasing day by day.

So it is always advisable that shred early, shred hard and shred often.