The shredding of printed information is an important part of information security. It's important to use a cross cut paper shredder as apposed to a strip cut shredder, but most of all it's important to verify that all your printed information is being shredded before it's thrown away. [more]
During a recent audit we had a client tell us that they collect all their paper to be shredded, lock it up daily, and then send it to one of their main branches for shredding on a weekly basis. It's our standard procedure to check the dumpsters behind our customers during our audits and in this case we found a few trash bags of non-shredded paper containing customer information. A trash bag full of paper with customer information appears to be regular trash to the untrained janitorial staff. In this case proper labeling and more training could have helped avoid this problem. Taking the time periodically to ensure that your paper shredding procedures are being followed could prevent exposing your confidential information.