Editor's Letter

Technology companies have for some time been planting images in the minds of managers of a paperless office. It is an image that can cause some discomfort for entrepreneurs who have built their businesses on the shredding of documents and files.

Fortunately for shredding company owners and employees, these visions are mostly promises made before they can be fulfilled. Offices and institutions continue to generate documents, whether because their own security policies insist on back-up files, or because individual employees still work best when looking at printed words on a page.

While completely paperless communication may not have arrived, undoubtedly immense amounts of information are being transferred and stored on electronic media. Document destruction companies face a choice when addressing this topic: remain focused on documents or begin exploring the destruction of discs, hard drives, storage units and other electronic media formats.

The industry’s trade association seems to have foreseen this expansion of its member companies’ duties, having selected the National Association for Information Destruction as its name. And document destruction company owners who begin offering electronic media destruction services are fairly unanimous in why they expanded their services: Customers were asking them about it.

For shredding company managers, adding high-tech aspects (de-magnetizing and testing electronic storage devices) to a business plan could seem intimidating. The shredding of electronic components and equipment changes the operational equation. But research can help to hurdle many of these perceived barriers. Some document destruction companies have also found that striking an alliance with an electronics recycling/hard drive-erasing company can prove beneficial.

Many document destruction companies have found that providing service and guaranteeing security remain the common denominators. If a company has proven its worth in supplying secure document destruction, it will get the benefit of the doubt when asked to provide electronic information destruction.

Without question, mobile shredding companies focusing on paper must do their homework before expanding into the destruction of computer hard drives and electronic media. But most have found it is an assignment worth completing and one that will help ensure a more diversified business that is better equipped to handle future security and information destruction challenges.