Any violation of data protection regulations, including the improper disposal of documents and electronics, are increasingly subject to significant fines, embarrassing headlines, and the loss of customer trust. As a result, strategies to avoid these consequences by bolstering both regulatory compliance and data security are increasingly important.
Generally speaking, such strategies fall into two basic groups, those that are dependent on employee awareness and cooperation, and those, such as network firewalls and permission controls, where employees have no control or discretion.
Of those two categories, those that do require employee awareness and cooperation are more wide-spread and diverse, ranging from avoiding harmful email links to scrutinizing data-related service providers. It’s no surprise, therefore, that they are also the greater threat and cause most data breaches.
To their credit, regulators recognize this fact and understand that the only thing an organization can do in these cases is provide the employees with proper training and instructions.
Regulators’ recognition of this limitation has a flip side, however. Should an organization fail to provide such training and instructions to employees where their awareness and cooperation is required, they may well hold the organization willfully negligent. After all, how could they expect the required cooperation if employees had not been properly trained.
Secure information destruction ranks high on the list of data security measures that are dependent on employee awareness and cooperation. Virtually every employee has the opportunity to undermine security and compliance countless times a day by carelessly discarding something that should have been destroyed. Should the employee decide wrong, an organization’s regulatory culpability and the consequences are going to be determined by the degree to which employees have been trained on the importance of and the process for secure destruction. Simply pointing to a collection container with verbal instructions to use if for “anything that needs to be shredded” is not going to be considered adequate.
Let Shred Vault Help!
At Shred Vault we specialize in one thing, and we know it well. With our expertise and tools, we can help clients develop the required training, thereby minimizing the likelihood of employee mistakes, while insulating them from the consequences when mistakes happen.
Contact Shred Vault today to learn how easy we can make it.
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