So, you’ve had the early morning call from a staff member. A fire in the floor above you has spread to your office floor. The fire brigade got there quickly but, even so, more than half of your paper records are damaged by fire or water, many beyond recovery. A number of your PCs have also had water all over them, and some may need to be replaced.
You can be sure that you have many late nights and weekends at work to look forward to, sorting out what can be recovered and what must be discarded.
Where on earth do you start?
At this point, I hope you are reading this before something like the above scenario has actually happened, and that you will have thought through – and documented – how you would deal with such a disaster before it happens. Of course, the best type of disaster recovery is disaster prevention e.g. offsite backups of business critical documents, so that even if your office disappears, your business does not. And I’m sure you are either very happy that you have done these things, or very unhappy that you have not.
But there it is – your office is blackened in places and wet nearly everywhere. There needs to be a delicate balance between acting carefully according to a plan, but quickly so that lasting damage is minimised. It is critical to attend first to the most essential documents.
Some excellent disaster recovery suggestions along these lines may be found at:
An important part of this is managing secure disposal of documents which are indeed damaged beyond repair. A reputable document destruction specialist, such as Confidential Shredding Co, can attend to all aspects of document destruction.
Organising record destruction
Once you have collected your paper records to be destroyed, or perhaps the media on which they are stored, Confidential Shredding Co provides secure, compliant, efficient and hassle-free destruction of all forms of user information:
- Paper records
- Hard disk storage and CDs
- X-rays and other electronic media
We pick up your items slated for destruction, and issue you a Certificate of Destruction upon completion, providing you with auditable evidence of compliance.
Further information
There are federally mandated standards for the proper destruction or de-identification of personal information that may be found here.