Shredding Industry

Since the introduction of the Internet stricter privacy laws have been introduced and the public have become increasingly concerned about the protection of personal information. By law every entity (be it a company, government, business or an individual) with access to an individual’s personal information has an obligation to protect the owner’s privacy by securing electronic data sources and stored documents. Considering the logistics involved it is not feasible or cost effective to provide secure storage for every document beyond its useful/legal life cycle. At the end of this cycle the document must be destroyed to protect privacy and/or protect the vested interests of any entity. Common methods to destroy documents include portable document shredders of various sizes for the home and the office as well as commercial methods such as pulping, pulverizing and chemically decomposition.

It is unlikely a commercial service would be used to destroy documents after the whistle is blown on illegal activities but portable document shredders are often used to destroy incriminating evidence. To be thorough investigators must collect every shred of paper and reconstruct each page to decipher if it contains anything that may be incriminating. The time/cost to reconstruct evidence often limits the extent of an investigation and as a direct result it can reduce the number/probability of successful prosecution/s. In the best interests of the wider community investigators must use the most efficient methods available to them. We would like to introduce you to Unshredder - the first commercial document reconstruction tool available in the world!

Industry News