What Exactly is A Certificate of Destruction?
A Certificate of Destruction is a straightforward document that could be overlooked. Lets take a look at each word in it as defined:
- Certificate: a document containing a certified assertion, particularly one about the veracity of a claim.
- Destruction: The act or state of being eliminated or destroyed.
Combining these phrases defines a document that attests to your compliance with local, state, and federal data privacy regulations.
What is a Certificate of Destruction?
A Certificate of Destruction is a written declaration that the stated items (documents, hard drives, electronics, and more) have been securely and appropriately destroyed for all enterprises that produce private information.
What items are defined on the certificate?
The certificate must have the following information in order for it to be useful to your company and acknowledged by an auditor:
- the company’s name and address that offered the shredding service.
- the service dates.
- the process utilized to erase the data.
- The destruction of the items’ identification.
- a declaration attesting to their destruction.
- the destroyer’s signature or logo, who was in charge of the destruction.
Why require a Certificate of Destruction?
When a document’s retention period is up, you are legally obligated to securely destroy it if your company handles sensitive information-containing papers. Confidential information examples include:
- Individually identifying information
- Information covered by data privacy legislation is referred to as protected health information (PHI).
- Business trade secrets
- Financial data Personal data, including boarding cards, shipping labels, and other materials
- Everything private stored on digital devices like hard drives, USB drives, phones, and other electronics
You should always be given a Certificate of Destruction as proof that your materials were securely destroyed after any paper shredding or media destruction service.
What benefit does a Certificate of Destruction offer?
Beyond confirming that your information has been deleted, a Certificate of Destruction has a lot of value:
It safeguards your customers, employees, business, and you personally by shifting liability from each of those parties to the certificate’s issuer.
The certificate serves as a record of your organization’s adherence to all applicable legislation.
A chain of custody must be established for all of your created and saved data, and the certificate seals off the paper trail. In the event that there is a compliance issue, it will offer protection.
Will the company that shreds my documents give me a Certificate of Destruction?
Prior to using a shredding company’s services, you must ask them this crucial question. One will be offered by a qualified and respected organization, but you should still verify that one is given after each shredding process.
Request an estimate on our website or by calling 860-627-5800 to learn more. Our experts will ask you a few questions to better understand your requirements, after which they will tell you exactly what to expect from start to finish, including the cost.
