Hard drives are a part of any business's data storage plans. Companies in Salt Lake City and across the country use hard drives to store data from past quarters and annual reporting, including financial records to employees' personal information. These hard drives can contain information you want to keep secure and private. So what do you do when it's time to get rid of that data? Improperly destroying hard drives can cause your company's confidential information to fall into the wrong hands. 

Here are three reasons why you should use a professional hard drive destruction service instead of risking your data security to other methods:

Salt Lake City, Utah (Tuesday, January 12, 2021) Rocky Mountain Document Destruction announces its partnership with "Success in Education" (SIE) today. RMDD will donate the value of the recycled paper it shreds back to SIE to help implement their programs.

Success in Education is a non-profit group in Utah focused on helping children in school succeed through one of their three programs. "We believe in the lifelong, transformative power oof an engaging education. That is why we're dedicated to enhancing and enriching scholastic experiences by creating, enabling, and integrating programs that change the world."

“Success in Education is pleased to have Rocky Mountain Document Destruction join us in our mission to change the world – one student at a time. Their sponsorship contributes to the dissemination of free college and career readiness tools for Utah students, from learning to read in elementary school, all the way to earning scholarships and receiving job training in high school and beyond. We are grateful that an esteemed group such as Rocky Mountain Document Destruction is dedicated to the successes of Utah students, and has joined Success in Education as a sponsor.”

SIE's three programs are "Code to Success," "Keys to Success," and "Road to Success." Through these three programs, SIE has donated to over 200 schools and nearly 250,000 students. It has helped these students access more than $130 million in scholarships and tuition waivers. After STEM was implemented in 2013, SIE created its newest program, "Code to Success," to give kids a six-week bootcamp in coding to help them learn one of six languages. 

"As the management of Rocky Mountain Document Destruction looked for a way to give back to the community, we chose the success in education foundation as our way. The idea of giving back to the education foundation will have a ripple effect in the community, businesses and homes," said Larry Gibbons, Managing Senior Partner. "Plus, we liked the phrase: 'You can shred for Ed.'"

​Throwing important documents in the trash is high-risk behavior. Your sensitive information could be subject to theft while sitting in a regular trash can. Whether it's personal information or confidential information about your business, scammers want it! Falling victim to identity theft, money scams, and losing business ideas to competitors are all possibilities when you don't take the necessary steps to protect your private information.
 
As a business operator, it's your responsibility to ensure the private data of yourself, your clients, and your customers stays private. But shredding private documents and other important papers is time-consuming, and when you complete the shredding, you still have to figure out how to get rid of all of those shredded papers safely and securely.

​The Rocky Mountain Document Destruction sales team visits hundreds of businesses in and around the greater Salt Lake City area throughout the year. During these visits, our sales team inevitably encounters companies that insist on destroying important documents or hard drives and shredding paper themselves. The situation typically looks like this: small to medium-sized companies paying a staff member, sometimes an hourly employee, and other times a salaried, full-time staff member to manually shred papers, destroy important documents, or even dispose of old computer hard drives. This employee sits in front of a small paper shredder, feeding five to ten sheets of paper at a time through the cheap machine, hoping it won’t overheat from being fed too much paper too fast. Or worse, the shredder could break down because the employee failed to remove a staple or paper clip from a stack of documents. Upon inquiry from the Rocky Mountain Document Destruction sales executive, the employee divulges that it takes them anywhere between ten to thirty minutes per day to shred all the paper and other important documents that end up in the “shred pile.” We even heard a story about employees spending hours smashing old hard drives with hammers out in the company parking lot! While that sounds like a lot of fun, it’s not the safest and most effective way to destroy an old hard drive.

​In each of these cases, the business owner or other business leader believes they are saving their company money by handling this critical process themselves. At first glance, the do-it-yourself approach can seem to be the most cost-effective way to manage all your company’s document destruction and paper shredding needs. Not only is handling these processes yourself not the most cost-effective way to do it, but destroying critical documents yourself can cost you more money, time, and other resources.

The minimum wage is $7.25 per hour in Utah, but most employees trusted to purge old documents earn upwards of $15.00 per hour. If that person spends thirty minutes per day shredding paper, that process costs the company $150 per month in employee salary alone. This cost does not include equipment costs and lost opportunity costs when that employee spent time mindlessly shredding documents rather than completing the other, more essential tasks that makeup that employee’s job. Add the liability of someone’s private information getting lost or stolen because the document destruction process isn’t secure, and you have a costly do-it-yourself operation.

​So, why work so hard to save a few pennies when there is a more efficient, secure, and environmentally friendly way to shred those documents and destroy those old computer hard drives? Outsourcing your document shredding and hard drive destruction needs to Rocky Mountain Document Destruction will save you money! We destroy your documents faster with a security guarantee, and we recycle all of that shredded paper! We’ll safely and securely transport all of your shredded paper to our recycling facility, where it can be processed and reused. Because we recycle your shredded paper, outsourcing your document destruction needs is the best method for our environment. Plus, outsourcing to Rocky Mountain Document Destruction means no more mundane tasks for your valuable employees.

​Save money. Keep your private information secure. Help the environment. Keep employees on-task — all with Rocky Mountain Document Destruction.

If you are like most people, you probably take some measures to ensure your personal information and identity are secure. Maybe you change your internet passwords frequently. You may be careful not to share your credit card numbers or social security number over the phone unless you share them with a verified recipient. Perhaps you are very selective about what you share online via social media or some other medium. When you are at home sorting through your mail, conceivably, you don’t simply throw away any documents or other papers that contain your personal information. You likely have a paper shredder in your home to handle that job.

Rocky Mountain Document Destruction is committed to the education of properly shredding documents. Documents, hard drives, and even mail is meant to be shred, not shared.