What Does NAID AAA Certification Mean for Document Shredding?
August 24, 2017
Your business faces many risks every day. One of them is the disruption that can happen because a product or service that you’ve purchased doesn’t perform as it should.
Luckily, for most of what you buy, you have a certain amount of protection against problems occurring. If you install a new office printer and it doesn’t work as promised the manufacturer or dealer will fix or replace the printer.
But businesses increasingly face risks that are somewhat less tangible than a malfunctioning piece of equipment. The data and information the company handles faces increasing compliance requirements in the form of federal and provincial privacy and information disposal laws. Failure to meet those requirements can not only put your company on the wrong side of the law, but it could expose it to litigation from customers, suppliers and employees. And that could be a heap of disruption.
Companies have instituted information handling policies, including document shredding schedules, to help ensure they stay within the law and any contract requirements or non-disclosure agreements they have.
But what guarantees do you have, like the one you get with an office printer, that your information destruction program actually performs to the level that’s required to meet your purposes?
NAID ‘AAA’ Certified Information Destruction
One of the basic problems with meeting your legal and contractual obligations for information destruction is that we often mistake of thinking that destroying a document equates to destroying all the information on it. Just because you put a document through your office shredder doesn’t mean that the information on it can’t be reconstituted.
The National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) exists to help companies like yours rest assured that your information has been irretrievably destroyed. The NAID has developed its ‘AAA’ certification program to ensure that information destruction companies, including document shredding businesses, meet or exceed legislated requirements and security specifications for information destruction.
This includes ongoing on-site audits of member companies to ensure that destruction facilities, equipment and processes, employee background checks, and incidence response preparedness are all in compliance with the NAID’s standards and external regulatory compliance.
What Does NAID ‘AAA’ Certified Document Shredding Mean for Your Company?
Like the warranty on your printer, it is your assurance that the information destruction service you get from a NAID ‘AAA’ certified company meets your requirements for information destruction, which is that you are in compliance with any legal and contractual data destruction requirements you have.
