Most of us do not have to worry about keeping information secure, except out own personal information such as passports, driving licences and national insurance details, however, what about the companies who hold our personal information? How do companies cope with the ever growing amount of information?

Everytime you fill in a form with your personal information and that information is posted to a company, the company who receives it has an obligation to ensure that information is stored in a safe and secure environment.

If you are self employed you will have filled in tax returns, once filled in, you send of that tax return to the tax office who keep hold of that information and as well as storing the information for a certain amount of time, they are also required to destroy that information when it is no longer necessary to keep the documents on file.

For companies who hold this information, as documents accumulate, general space in the office is no longer suitable to keep peoples personal records managed and stored, so they have to look for alternative solutions.

If you are a large company such as a tax office, court, dentist or any company that is required to keep peoples personal details on file you have a choice to manage that information yourself, or outsource the records management to a company who are equipped to storing documents and data in a secure location where they can be managed efficiently.

Keeping documents in the office is not a viable solution for many mid to large companies. Some may initially opt to renting additional premises to store that information, but then they have to assign a member of staff to keep the information organised as well as destroying the information when the time comes. For most companies, this is not a good solution as it can prove to be quite costly.

Staff costs, cost of storage premises, storage compartments, filing when a new batch of information is ready to be stored, and retrieval of information when a document is required and on top of that, the cost of destroying information by purchasing your own destruction equipment.

Paper documents are not the only format of information that is required to be managed and stored, other formats including computer hard drives, CD ROMs and any format which holds sensitive data is also required to be stored and destroyed according to the data protection laws.

Outsourcing records management and data destruction could prove to be alot less on staff costs, storage and equipment so for many mid to larger companies; this could prove to be the best solution.

There are many companies in local areas that offer this kind of service and generally it is a matter of looking around to see whether the company you are considering offer all the services including managing and storing information, keeping the information in a secure environment, providing a service which ensures you can receive one of your documents when you require it within a certain period of time as well as have the necessary equipment to destroy that information efficiently when the time comes.

It is always advisable to visit the premises of the company where you are considering to keep your sensitive information so that you have happy with the service the company offers as well as having the peace of mind known that your documents as safe and well managed.