Protecting your customers from identity theft is more than just a company's moral obligation -- it's the law. All companies should be taking precautionary measures to protect their clients' information as any type of breach can be devastating. Identity thieves are diligent and understand common mistakes even earnest companies can potentially make in regards to client information. They are clever and have worked out sophisticated security scams which can have a detrimental effect. If a security breach does occur within a company and a customer's identity is stolen, they will have to deal with a damaged reputation, monetary restitution fees, the loss of customer loyalty and scathing media mentions.

Identity theft was not declared a federal crime until 1998. In the same year, many regulations were enacted across all states to protect customers involved in ecommerce. Every year new and amended legislation is introduced to continue the battle with identity theft. While these safeguards will help prevent and deter identity theft, the paperwork that nearly every business needs to keep for tax and record-keeping purposes must remain protected. Examples of such documents include customer lists, sales statistics, personnel files, account records, credit card receipts, medical records and outdated business records. These thousands of documents that contain sensitive information of customers must be destroyed securely.

A few best practice security breach prevention tips include:

Shred everything on a regular basis. By implementing "shred all" policies, you avoid the risks of human error or poor judgment about what needs to be shredded.

Shred before recycling. Don't let confidential documents sit unattended in recycling bins

Create a culture of security. Train all employees in information security best practices to reduce human error. Explain why it's important, and conduct regular security audits of your office to assess security performance.

Think prevention, not reaction. Instead of just dealing with breaches as they happen, develop preventative approaches that are strategic, integrated and long-term, such as eliminating security risks at the source and permanently securing the entire document lifecycle in every part of your organization.

While a company can implement its own paperwork destruction procedures, they also then must allocate the time and resources to ensure the document destruction occurs at regular intervals and the paperwork cannot be reconstructed. Professional document destruction services exist for this very reason and provide more than just state of the art equipment. They can also destroy documents onsite so businesses know sensitive paperwork has not left their premises. Some document destruction services raise the bar even higher with personnel that are trained in identity theft legislation compliance so they can ensure best practices are instituted and followed. By trusting professionals to handle this important part of running an aboveboard and compliant operation, companies are now able to focus on doing what makes them successful without the fear of a major security breach.