How would you like to have your checks be used as packaging material? My guess is, not very much. Our local news aired a story the other day about a lady who received a package filled with shredded checks as the packaging material for her order.

Photo credit: Kristof Creative

She even managed to piece together some of those checks because the company used one of those old style strip cut shredders and it wasn’t even doing its job properly. I don’t know where they got those from, whether it is their own customers (I doubt) or worse from a financial institution. Regardless, this is so wrong.

For one, financial institutions are required to safeguard our information and have proper systems in place not only for storage, retrieval and access of the data but for disposal as well. Secondly, the business in question is also required to protect its customers information.

We all are. Contrary to popular belief, a big chunk of identity is still being committed offline. Don’t get me wrong, not saying protecting customer data on your computer, ensuring secure connections etc are not wrong. But at the end of the day, don’t forget the non-technology part of the equation.

• Who has access to your customer records. Do they need to have access? Can they do their job just as well with limited access?
• How will you dispose of your clients sensitive data? If you intend to shred paper, then upgrade. For goodness sake, do not use a strip shredder. Go for confetti cut or better, micro cuts. I make it a habit to not only shred but actually put my hand in to mix up the pieces really good, sometimes splitting them into different bags and disposing them at different pickup dates.
• What have you done to your computer systems, office to safeguard the data? This is one of the biggest reasons I am a big advocate that the computer you work on should not be your family computer too. Not that you can’t trust your family but that makes it so much harder for you to secure and monitor what gets installed on the computer.
• If you use third party solutions. Ask how they handle all that.
• By all means, recycle. Recycle your toner and ink cartridges, recycle half printed paper that do not contain classified material. But when it comes to sensitive data, especially any customer information, no.