Companies regularly collect, analyse and store all types of data on their customers in order to extract information for sales and marketing purposes.
Many companies also re-sell the data they collect to third parties which can result in additional marketing material sent to you, often for products and services that you have no desire for. But what happens when these companies are finished with the information?
Data is a daily part of business
The answer, more often than not, is storage.
And therein lies in the problem.
Keeping digital or physical files is not uncommon due to the cheap nature of storage although it can often prove vulnerable to attacks and theft. Cyber security has proved to be a key issue in the news recently with several high profile hacks into large corporate companies at which point data can be taken or stolen, sometimes without the company realising that it is gone.
Destroying your data in a safe manner is essential as it can prevent sensitive information from entering the wrong hands. At TDS Safeguard we specialise in securely destroying any old data that your company may have in order to avoid any issues further down the line. Protecting your business by disposing of data in a safe manner can prevent any customer details, or key stake holder information, such as payroll or health records, from entering the public domain which could, in turn, put the reputation of your company at stake.
Digital Data
The digital world has been rocked recently after hackers attacked Sony and the Pentagon Central Command’s Twitter feed. These breaches in security have raised many questions about what is safe to store on digital platforms and has even led the US President Barack Obama to state:
“Cyber threats pose an enormous challenge for our country. It’s one of the most series economic and national security challenges we face as a nation.”
But it’s not just America where cyber security is a problem; Britain faces the same issues as Prime Minister David Cameron pointed out that eight out of ten large companies have been attacked through the internet. The amount of data that cyber criminals could access is unimaginable – IBM estimate that around 2.5 billion gigabytes of data was created every day in 2012 and nearly 90% of all the data in the world was created in the past few years. With all this information floating around the web it’s no wonder that more and more companies are turning to us to help destroy their old digital data.
Physical Data
It’s not just digital data which can cause issues to businesses; physical data stored away in filing cabinets could also contain sensitive information that needs to be handled with care. While theft from a business premises usually focuses on taking tangible items, if someone stole personal files it could prove just as lucrative.
Businesses can store all types of records about us including, in certain situations, enough information to be able to commit identity fraud. One example of this would be high street shops which offer loyalty cards to customers – the sign up form is often extensive and can contain everything a fraudster would need to know about you such as name, date of birth and bank details in order to ‘steal’ your identity.
Regardless of how you store your data at TDS Safeguard we offer innovative solutions to making sure that once you have finished with your information it can be safely destroyed. We aim to protect your company from the theft or loss of old data that you no longer need in order to maintain your brand reputation.
call us on 020 8211 9800