Before hauling all of the documents in, go through them and remove those you are not required to keep. You can have them shredded before hauling those heavy boxes into the office.

Paper makes a lot of clutter – but everyone saves documents for many reasons, whether they are financial records, medical records or even monthly bills. Offices have even more clutter filling up filing cabinets. If you are a business, you need to clear out your files more often, but homeowners should go through their files at least once every six months to dispose of documents that you no longer need to keep.

Why do identity thieves want to get their hands on your hard drive? Old hard drives can provide a wealth of valuable information, including your Social Security number, banking details, and contact information for friends and relatives. Armed with this highly sensitive and personal data, identity thieves may attempt to open credit in your name, con people you know, or steal from your savings.

Carolina Shred, the fastest growing shredding company in the Southeast, has named Dan Mayberry as a Territory Manager for the Upstate of SC and Western NC. His responsibilities will include overseeing Operations for the Western NC and Upstate SC area.

Think about the last time your laptop or desktop computer bit the dust. Chances are you relegated it to the electronic waste facility (or sold for a few bucks on Craigslist) without a second thought. 

Different types of shredders cut paper into different sized pieces. Shredders that produce the smallest pieces provide the highest level of security but also cost more. When you choose a paper shredding service provider, consider how much security you need. Large companies need more sophisticated shredders to provide the most protection, while small businesses and people shredding their household papers are often able to use simpler machines.

DIN standards have seven levels, which indicate the size of the paper particle once it goes through the shredder. The levels start at P-1 and go through P-7. If you need high security for your shredded documents, you need a shredder that uses a higher number. P-7 is the most secure as it’s the smallest paper particle. While the DIN standard is rather complicated, part of it is paper shredder security levels, which simply tell you the size of the paper once shredded. Thus, a shredder that cuts at level P-5 is more secure than a shredder that cuts at level P-2.

The GDPR is the EU General Data Protection Regulation. It replaces the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. The GDPR definition is a process that applies to personal data processing by processors and controller in the EU. It also applies to personal data processing by a processor or controller that is not established in the EU if the processor or controller offers goods and/or services to EU citizens.

You may be looking into ways to prevent identity theft, including credit monitoring. While you might have a credit monitoring account, shredding is the safest, most cost-effective and best identity theft protection that you could use. If your documents are shredded, no one will be able to get their greedy hands on your personal information. Once you start shredding your documents, you will have less use for credit monitoring, though it is still a good idea to have that, especially if you have never destroyed personal information before.

People throw junk mail and other papers away without thinking twice about what information could be gleaned from those documents. Your address is a big piece of the puzzle when someone is trying to steal your identity. As part of identity theft prevention, you should shred any piece of paper with your address, phone number or other identifying information on it.

Confidential information and trade secrets are often the targets of identity thieves and disgruntled employees. The Trademarks Act, Copyright Act and Patent Act do not regulate many trade secrets or any confidential information. This means that you have to protect this information yourself. Security compliance should be taught at your place of employment or your business if you are a business owner.

Over 17 million Americans fall victim to identity theft every year. Every day, you hear about some high-profile corporation having security breaches or a scenario that could lead to an identity theft nightmare. If major department stores, large corporations, political parties and even the USPS can be hacked, you can be hacked too. Protect yourself and protect your business from identity theft by taking certain actions to protect your personal information or to protect company data from identity thieves.

If confidential business information gets into the wrong hands, a business could fail. Or, it could suffer at the hands of criminals. Keeping business, employee and management information under lock and key and only available to those who need to know the information is just one of the ways to prevent your data from falling into the wrong hands. Learn how to keep these 5 examples of confidential information in the office away from the wrong people.

Most workplaces have a confidential information clause written into their employment agreements. Whether you work for an attorney, real estate agent, doctor, or even in a factory, you may have access to confidential information. Confidential information is anything that has sensitive information containing personal data.  This type of information must be closely guarded so that it doesn't get into the hands of a competitor.

Shredding documents is an important step in securing your personal data or, if you own a business, your customers' personal data. Shredding hard drives is also a step in protecting personal and confidential data, though most people do not think about shredding hard drives – they just throw the computer away.

When choosing an onsite shredding company, you should find out several pieces of information. Carolina Shred provides all of the information you need to know to choose an on site document shredding service, including information about shredding services and reasonable prices. After you ask yourself how to choose an onsite shredding company, visit our website to find the answers to your questions.

Most companies have switched to digital data instead of keeping paper files. Doctors, lawyers, banks and many other professions now store files on the computer. Eventually, a computer becomes obsolete or it dies and companies replace the computers with new computers. Even if you format the hard drives on the computers being thrown away, data thieves could still get information that was stored on the hard drives.

Professional shredding services ensure that your documents are cross-cut shred with no possibility of putting them back together to steal confidential information. Carolina Shred has lock boxes that we leave on your premises to hold documents that need to be shredded. The documents stay locked until they are ready for the shredder. Shredding service cost is reasonable and a good insurance policy against identity theft.

No business, regardless of size, is immune to cybercriminals. Even well-known companies such as Home Depot, Target and TJ Maxx have been targeted by hackers. In today's technological environment, you have to stay on top of all types of threats to data security and integrity, right from your hardware through your employees. Never assume that your business is too small for cybercriminals to target.

Now that many companies have an online presence, especially payment gateways online, data breaches are imminent. As software companies come up with software to stop, hackers and spammers find more ways around getting through the information. Keeping your data protected takes a major part of a company's resources. To prepare for data breach, you should take steps to beef up your digital security while at the same time, ensuring that non-digital information is also safe, a knowing the risks and threats of company data.

Carolina Shred offers mobile shredding services for businesses and residential shredding services in Charlotte NC and surrounding area. Many businesses may not want to send their documents to a shredding service and instead, opt to watch their sensitive documents get shredded. Mobile shredding is perfect for this since customers may watch documents go from the document storage containers directly into the shredder. Carolina Shred is part of the Mobile Shredding Association and it MSA certified.

This holiday season practice safe Christmas shopping if you shop online. Deloitte estimates that over one trillion dollars will be spent by Americans in just online shopping this year. And, Nasdaq stated that fraud rates go up more than 200 percent during the Christmas shopping season. Protect yourself by knowing how to spot fraudulent sites among other actions this year.

Information security compliance laws are not just for your IT department. If everyone is aware of the regulations, your company is more secure since information does not leave a secure area by mistake. When your employees know the regulations, you'll also save money because some regulations come with hefty fines if they are broken.

Everyone who works for a living expects to be safe at work. In fact, the OSHA General Duty Clause 29 U.S.C. §654, 5(a)1 states, “Employers are required to provide their employees with a place of employment that “is free from recognizable hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious harm to employees.”” Additionally, employees expect their personal information to be kept safe. Workplaces have sensitive information including social security numbers, birth dates and addresses.

Certain documents must be kept as paper copies and as digital copies. However, keeping important paper documents in your home could lead to identity theft, or something could happen to them, even if you keep them in what you think is a safe place. They could be stolen if someone breaks in, they could go up in flames if you have a fire, or if your home gets flooded, they could be ruined in a flood. A tornado could spread your important documents all over the county.

When it's time to get rid of an old computer, whether you are a business or an individual, you need to take steps to secure the hard drive – and that means ensuring it's completely destroyed so that less than honest people are not able to get your personal or work information from the drive.  Also, check out our guide to shredding medical documents for more information about medical document destruction.

Though taxes aren't due until mid-April, many people do their taxes early. The first quarter of the new year is a haven for identity thieves because people do not think of shredding old tax documents or copies of documents that have personal information on them, including your social security number. Reduce your chances of becoming an identity theft victim by properly shredding important documents, including tax documents.

In this digital age, worrying about how to send your tax documents securely is always a concern. There’s lots of sensitive information on tax documents, such as social security numbers, banking information and addresses. Here’s a list of options on How to Safely Send Your Tax Documents in 2017.

You may think that keeping important documents in a lock filing cabinet is enough security, but with today's technology, electronically storing documents is much safer. You can assign levels of confidentiality and assign employees levels of confidentiality for access. Furthermore, when it's time to purge files, you don't have to worry about choosing a shredding company that you trust. A side benefit is that you have extra space that is no longer taken up by filing cabinets.

Canada has apparently accumulated too much paper.

The federal government spent approximately $12 million more on hiring companies that offer services like document shredding and storage in the last fiscal year than it did ten years ago, according to an analysis of Public Accounts documents.