how secure is "secure"?

How Secure is “Secure”?

A few years ago a piece of news hit the newspapers explaining how some fraudsters had managed to discover account details, credit card numbers and other sensitive data from a large on-line store.

The store didn’t know how this could have been; all data was encrypted, yes some was printed but they shredded securely everything before incineration.

There was an investigation into how the details were found and after a lot of technical probing they discovered the IT systems were solid – nobody was getting in that way.

Further checks revealed that data was encrypted anyway so even if they’d got it; they couldn’t do anything with it.

It was only when a house was raided a few weeks later that they discovered what had happened. Documents had indeed been shredded, but they never made their way to the incinerator. On the way they were intercepted and taken to a house in bags where dozens of people literally matched up the shredded paper and taped them together!

It sounds too crazy to be true, but the gang now had enough data to go on a spending spree with other people’s credit cards.

Obviously shredding is a good idea, but not all shredders are built equally and you have to be careful what you shred and how you do it.

A straight-cut shredder as used in this instance obviously wasn’t enough, so the company should have used a stronger method.

One simple way to solve it which won’t cost the earth is a cross-cut shredder. There are many types available and they make the whole process of putting documents back together a very difficult task.

Want even more security? Consider diamond cut or even shredders that pulp the documents.

The key to this is to understand what happens to that paper after its shredded. If the paper could be re-assembled (given a lot of effort) then do you know where it goes when it leaves your office? If you’re at all unsure, you should be putting all efforts into making that shred as irreversible as possible.

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