Every business produces proprietary and confidential information. Businesses spend millions of dollars to protect information stored on their computers. Once this information is used to create a document, it to needs to be protected by being destroyed before discarding it.

The Law

HIPPA
Health Insurance Protability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), was enacted in 1996 and includes provisions intended to safeguard the privacy of patient health records. HIPPA is a significant piece of legislation with onerous penalties. HIPPA specifies shredding as a recommended form of document disposal.

GLB
Gramm Leach Bliley (GLB) is another federal law with much broader scope than HIPPA. The broad standards outlined in this law were designed to compel financial institutions to ñrespect the privacy of its customers and to protect the security and confidentiality of those customers non-public personal information.î

FACTA
The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 also known as the FACTA Act was signed into law December 4, 2003. The Act contains a number of provisions intended to combat consumer fraud and related crimes, including identity theft.

Documents containing the following personal information
should be destroyed:

• Telephone Numbers
• Drivers License Number
• Passport Number
• Credit Card Numbers
• Bank Account Information
• Address
• Social Security numbers
• Insurance Policy data
• Employment information
• Investment account information
  

The following types of Documents should always be destroyed:

• Legal Documents
• Medical Records
• Financial Records
• P&L Statements
• Accounting
• File/Records
• Personnel Files
• Payroll Records
• Market Research
• Bank Statements
• Tax Records
• Contracts
• X-Rays
• Client Lists
• Invoices
• Price/Inventory Lists
• Proposals and Quotes
• Cancelled Checks
• Business Plans
• R&D Files/Data
• Credit Card Statements