You may think that your business doesn’t need to worry about customer data, and that there isn’t a pressing need for disposal of this information either. While this may impact a few smaller businesses, data protection (the new GDPR) will impact almost all businesses across the country. That’s why, even if you’re not right now, you should always be thinking of using confidential waste disposal.
What is Confidential Waste?
Confidential waste is waste that has sensitive information on it. This information can often be customer related or employee related but isn’t exclusive to these. Almost all businesses will have a level of sensitive information that would be dangerous in the wrong hands. Confidential waste is as much about data safety and protection as anything else. Data protection laws say you need to protect people’s sensitive information and can only keep hold of it so long as it is relevant. Once that changes, it must be disposed of securely and safely.
7 Reasons Your Business Needs Confidential Waste Disposal
Helping Staff Feel Secure
Data protection is in relation to staff as well as customers. If your workplace is deemed a risk of allowing sensitive, personal information fall into the wrong hands, then staff aren’t going to want to work for you. The very minimum is they will become unhappy and will want to know exactly how you’re going to create better processes. This is on reason you should have a confidential waste supplier like Direct365.
Consumer Confidence
While the punishment for non-compliance can be major in the short term, the reputational damage in the long term could be much worse. If the report of a punishment for data breaches gets out into the open, customers could see your business as being too much of a risk. That’s something that, depending on your actually area of expertise, could impact you heavily. For one thing that is easy to accomplish, it isn’t worth the hassle of incorrect waste management.
The Law
This is probably the most obvious factor around why you need confidential waste disposal. There is so much legal scrutiny around the data protection act that it is hard to claim ignorance on data disposal.
The law states that you can only keep certain pieces of information for certain timeframes, or only while it is being used in direct relation to the collection of it. You can’t keep customer details for longer than you have a direct and pressing need to keep their information on record. The same goes for employee data and even client/partner business records. Anything that is sensitive needs to be disposed of with a confidential waste provider.
Saving Space
While it might not seem like the main concern, there’s a strong benefit to having unneeded waste disposed of, especially when space is money. Being able to keep storage costs to a minimum is worthwhile when business costs are increasing in almost all other aspects. Utilising space to a greater extent can help in more ways than just financial. As your business grows, how you use space for employees and their records will become even more important.
Reputational Damage
Similar to customer confidence, reputational damage can impact the suppliers you work with too. If businesses you work with don’t have the confidence to send you important information and business-critical data because of previous breaches, then this will directly hurt your chances of growth and success. For the sake of a legally required service, there’s no point risking the future and reputation of your business on something that is so easy to set up.
Safety and Security
The entire reason there is a data protection law is because the government deem certain information and data – such as personal and confidential – to be sensitive and requiring greater focus and security. This is usually data that can be used to negatively impact the person/organisation or information that is private to the original owner. This is why the law was created and the reason you need to hire a confidential waste shredding business to help.
Internal Function
Keeping information for longer than you need can be an administrative nightmare. Have less data in a more organised fashion both helps with space (as above) but reduces time spent finding vital information when it is actually needed. And why is that important? Because if a situation arises that a customer requests this info, or you need it in a time-sensitive manner, it will be much easier to find and that in itself will give confidence to the main user.
As you can see, there are seven good reasons to hire a confidential waste disposal company. But when hiring on, you want a business that has a good reputation, is reliable and takes the sensitivity of your confidential waste seriously. Direct365 have over a decade of experience with confidential waste, and with over 6,000 Trustpilot reviews from customers that rate our services as ‘excellent’, your shredding waste is in good hands.
For further information about how we can help, fill out the form below and one of our dedicated team members will contact you to discuss in greater detail.