Paper shredding is the gold standard for physical destruction when it comes to document and information security. Not only does it ensure confidential data is destroyed to protect from identity theft and fraud, but it’s an environmentally friendly practice too.
When looking for a way to destroy old documents, businesses may consider leasing an office shredding machine instead of making a purchase. Renting an industrial shredder that can handle high volumes of shredding costs money each month. In addition, there are other factors to consider, such as employee productivity, space constraints, security and convenience.
Paper Shredder Rental Considerations
If your business is contemplating renting a paper shredder, there are important considerations to keep in mind.
1. Paper Shredders Negatively Impact Productivity
Renting an in-house office shredder may appear to be a cost-effective solution, but it will detract from your organization’s efficiency. Document shredding by qualified employees is a time-consuming operation that wastes valuable time and raises labour expenses.
A better alternative is for employees to concentrate on revenue-generating tasks while shredding is outsourced to a professional service.
2. Rental Shredders Require Office Space
Rental shredders take up valuable square footage that may be better used for revenue-generating activities. Not only do you have to find a place for the machine, but somewhere secure to hold shredded materials until recycling day.
Shredding services, on the other hand, do not require large equipment. Instead, locked shredding consoles are strategically placed throughout the office to store confidential documents until their mobile shredding service. Alternatively, if you have a large quantity of boxes for destruction, a shredding service will arrive at your location and have all the confidential information destroyed within a few hours.
3. Paper Shredders Break Down
Even if you rent a shredder, your business will deal with frequent breakdowns and jams. Ongoing care and repairs are essential to keeping office shredder equipment in good working order. While regular maintenance may be included in the rental contract, your business could face periods of downtime, which creates a backlog of records in boxes that need to be shred.
Hiring a shredder service eliminates the stress of regular breakdowns and jams and ensures that sensitive documents are shredded in a timely fashion.
4. Shredder Equipment is Messy
When papers are shredded using a rental shredder, it produces fine, airborne dust particles that employees will have to clean up. When the machine’s receptacle is full, workers will also have to empty the machine, which is another mess to deal with.
By hiring a shredding service, there is no clean-up required since all personal documents are shred in an industrial shredding truck outside your office location.
5. Rental Shredder Equipment Only Destroys Paper Records
By renting an in-office paper shredder, your business will be limited in what employees can shred. These machines can only shred small stacks of papers, leaving other materials, such as hard drives, CDs and DVDs, backup tapes and optical media, at risk of a security breach.
When you hire a shredding service to shred sensitive documents, the industrial shredder can destroy all types of digital media into small shards that can never be reconstructed.
6. Office Shredders Can’t Handle Paper Clips and Staples
Another point to consider when renting a shredder is that it is near impossible for office equipment to shred staples and paper clips. Employees must remove these before shredding and arrange papers into manageable piles. Failure to do so can result in frustrating jams and inconvenient breakdowns.
On the other hand, shredding services can destroy paper clips, staples, binder clips and fasteners with industrial shredder equipment that save employees time and hassle.
7. Rental Shredders Are Not Secure
When businesses rent a shredder, they open their company to significant risk. Most office shredders only shred documents into thin strips, which are disposed into recycling boxes or trash cans. These pieces of paper can be reconstructed and used for illegal purposes, including fraud, identity theft and corporate espionage.
When hiring a professional service, documents are cross-cut into small pieces in a mobile shred truck and mixed with other shredded material so confidential data can never be stolen.
8. Renting a Shredder Is Not Compliant
When deciding to rent a shredder, it’s essential to understand whether the process is compliant with privacy laws. In Canada, companies must follow the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which includes regulations regarding the legal usage, storage and disposal of confidential information. By renting a shredder and destroying documents in-house, there is no record of compliance to show that information was destroyed correctly.
A shedder service, on the other hand, will provide a Certificate of Destruction at every service to validate compliance.
9. Mistakes Happen When Renting A Shredder
When companies rent or buy a shredder for in-office usage, human error does not disappear. Employees can make mistakes and incorrectly dispose of sensitive files into the trash or recycling bin, leading to a devasting information breach.
When you hire a shredder service, you have the assurance that all confidential data is properly destroyed and that the shredded material can never be reconstructed. A professional service provider will also help your organization create an information destruction policy that outlines what information needs to be shredded and how.
Choose A Secure Shredding Service For Your Sensitive Information
Why rent a shredder for your office when you can save your business time, money and added hassle? By choosing Blue-Pencil’s NAID AAA Certified mobile service, your company will benefit from secure, convenient and affordable shredding of your sensitive documents and digital media, including hard drives, CDs and DVDs, backup tapes, optical media and unwanted products.
Blue-Pencil provides several options for commercial shredding customers, including one-time and reoccurring mobile shredding in an on-site industrial shredding truck. We also provide a Certificate of Destruction upon completing every shredding service to guarantee that personal documents were destroyed, protected and recycled according to privacy laws.
Since 2014, Blue-Pencil has proudly serviced over 15,000 customers across the Greater Toronto Area and surrounding cities in Southern Ontario. To learn how your company can benefit from hiring our shredding service, fill out our contact form or call our customer support team at 1-877-821-9611 for a free quote.