As a highly reputable resource for document shredding in Colorado, XpresShred has become very popular among small to mid-sized businesses. Medical offices, legal offices and retailers love the convenience and security that locally owned XpresShred provides with document shredding in Denver metro area.

However, document destruction isn’t just for businesses; it’s for everyone. Homeowners, renters, workers, parents, adult children…everyone needs to shred documents at various times in order to maintain information security and privacy. The problem is that these people may not have the ability to desire or ability to invest in routine paper shredding services. Fortunately, this is a problem with a very easy solution.

In fact, there are three shredding options that everyday folks can choose from. The first is to take advantage of a one-time shredding appointment. XpresShred can provide mobile shredding in Denver and throughout the Front Range, by going to a customer’s home and shredding right outside the door. Customers can watch the entire process, to be sure that their information is being protected until it has been completely destroyed.  Alternately, we can dispatch one of our secure trucks to pick up the materials for transport to our plant for shredding.  With each approach, a Certificate of Destruction is issued after the paper is destroyed.  XpresShred is AAA Certified and audited for compliance by the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID).  You can rest assured that your documents and sensitive materials are protected and destroyed according to industry standards.

Another option is to drop papers off at our offices.  You can visit our plant in Englewood for quick, affordable drop off document shredding. You are welcome to witness the destruction, if you would like.

For a one-time shredding appointment outside your home, call XpresShred at 303.592.6000, and for easy drop off shredding drop by our plant between 8:00 and 4:30 from Monday through Friday.  You don’t need an appointment or advance notice.  We are ready to assist you when you are ready to come by.

Flash-based memory has been an industry standard for years, but solid state drives (SSDs) are just now becoming affordable enough to be included in original equipment manufacturer (OEM) devices. Solid state hard drives replace the traditional hard disk drive for storing system data as well as user documents, settings, records and credentials. SSDs are particularly favored in mobile computing, due to their resilience, portability and low voltage. The Macbook Air, the Acer Chromebook and the Samsung Chromebook all rely on flash storage, for example.

But in spite of the benefits for the end user, solid state drives pose new challenges for data security. A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Diego concluded that securely erasing data on SSDs is more difficult than on HDDs for a number of reasons. Important takeaways from the study include:

Solid State Drives Cannot Be Degaussed

For years, degaussing was an important and highly effective step in decommissioning hard disk drives and other digital media. Data on tapes, hard disk drives and floppy disks is stored magnetically. By exposing these types of media to high powered magnets, the data was erased or rendered completely irrecoverable. Because of the way solid state drives store data, degaussing has little to no effect on them. This includes mass solid state drives as well as USB thumbdrives, SD cards and USB pendrives.

Secure Deletion Methods on SSDs Don’t Always Work

Software-driven secure file deletion methods usually involve formatting a drive and then overwriting the sectors where the data was stored. This process is sometimes called sanitization. You can buy commercial software that automates this process for you. The problem is, however, that the majority of such software is designed for hard disk drive interfaces. Because the method by which solid state drives physically write data to sectors is fundamentally different than the read/write process for hard disk drives, the secure deletion commands often do not get carried out properly for SSDs. To remedy this issue, some SSD manufacturers have implemented built-in secure erasure mechanisms for SSDs, but even these features are less than 100% reliable.

Physical Destruction is Still the Most Secure Practice

As with hard disk drives, solid state drives that contain or formerly contained sensitive information should be shredded. The lesson that we’ve learned from other types of digital media is that no file can truly be eradicated electronically. With today’s technology, this is even more true for solid state drives.

What is card skimming?

‘Card skimming’ is the illegal copying of information from the magnetic strip of a credit or ATM card. It is a more direct version of a phishing scam.

The scammers try to steal your details so they can access your accounts. Once scammers have skimmed your card, they can create a fake or ‘cloned’ card with your details on it. The scammer is then able to run up charges on your account.

Card skimming is also a way for scammers to steal your identity (your personal details) and use it to commit identity fraud. By stealing your personal details and account numbers the scammer may be able to borrow money or take out loans in your name.

Warning signs

• A shop assistant takes your card out of your sight in order to process your transaction.

  Handheld Skimmer

• You are asked to swipe your card through more than one machine.
• You see a shop assistant swipe the card through a different machine to the one you used.
• You notice something suspicious about the card slot on an ATM (e.g. an attached device).
• You notice unusual or unauthorized transactions on your account or credit card statement.

Protect yourself from card skimming

• Keep your credit card and ATM cards safe. Do not share your personal identity number (PIN) with anyone. Do not keep any written copy of your PIN with the card.
• Check your bank account and credit card statements when you get them. If you see a transaction you cannot explain, report it to your credit union or bank.
• Choose passwords that would be difficult for anyone else to guess.

As well as following these specific tips, find out how to protect yourself from all sorts of other scams.

Do your homework

If you are using an ATM, take the time to check that there is nothing suspicious about the machine.

Ask yourself if you trust the person or trader who you are handing your card over to. If a shop assistant looks like they are going to take your card out of your sight, ask if it is really necessary.

Decide

If an ATM looks suspicious, do not use it and alert the ATM owner.

If you are in a shop and the assistant wants to swipe your card out of your sight, or in a second machine, you should ask for your card back right away and either pay with a check or cash, or not make the purchase.

Report them

If you think you have seen a card skimming scam, you should contact the bank, credit union or credit card provider that has been targeted.

If you think your card has been skimmed, contact your bank or credit union immediately to report it.

Mailings for unsolicited offers of pre-approved credit cards present a significant risk to identity theft if they fall into the wrong hands. Applications are completed under the name of the person identified and the address is changed so that the bills are sent to a different address. The victim, in this case, may not find out about the identity breach until the collection agencies start to contact them. Another significant risk area is Dumpster diving. Thieves simply search trash for important information and use the data to steal the identity of the target.

Shredding mail and documents that contain sensitive information is a recommended way to reduce the chance that your identity may be stolen. All documents that contain personal information such as social security numbers, address, billing statements or tax information should be properly disposed of. Shredding documents not only reduces that chance of identity theft, it also is environmentally sound, since all of the shredding materials are recycled.

Identity theft can be an exhausting problem to rectify, identity theft prevention is best. Police reports, notification to credit bureaus and repairing the damage done can take a significant amount of time to fix. In the meantime, bill collectors and denial of credit are very frustrating and difficult matters to handle. Therefore, it is important to take the proper precautions with identity information, such a shredding properly, which will reduce your exposure to being a victim of identity theft.

Everyone has turned on the local news to see some local company that improperly discarded client’s files in the dumpster.  Most of the time it is an employee who did not receive the proper training.  Another poor business practice is recycling without destroying.  We see it on a daily basis.  Loading docks all over the city with unlocked recycling bins waiting for pick-up.  These recycling bins are filled with company proprietary information along with their client’s personal and confidential information.  Any individual walking the street has complete and legal permission to rifle through these containers and take whatever they find.  That is not the only risk.  You need to think about what the recyclers do with the contents of those bins.

Recyclers tell their clients that when paper is recycled it is destroyed during the process.  This is true.  What recyclers do not tell their clients is the route the paper takes to be recycled.  Recyclers will send their transfer trucks around the city to collect paper deposited in their containers.  The transfer trucks return to their facility where they unload the paper into the balers.  Information is baled fully intact and staged for shipment.

China and Mexico are the largest purchasers of raw material to be recycled.  Those bales with company and personal information land on the docks of foreign countries perfectly intact.  You are probably saying “there has to be laws against such things!”  We have many laws on how sensitive information is to be maintained and destroyed.  From HIPAA, Gramm-Leech-Bliley, FACTA, Sarbanes-Oxley and HITECH, regulators have worked hard to protect the consumer.  The fact is that many companies believe they are destroying because they have not been given the correct information in regards to recycling.  There are plenty of good companies for Denver shredding services.  Please visit http://www.naidonline.org/ to find a directory of companies.  Shredding is very cost effective and not only protects your company, but it protects your clients who have put their trust in you.

The data recoverability or the overall security of the hard drive destruction process is a factor that has become more and more important as the number of obsolete or replaced hard drives has grown.  What is sufficient to ensure that the data contained on a hard drive is unrecoverable?

It is useful to consider the mechanics of the way hard drive data is placed on the drive.  Each individual manufacturer of hard drives has their own process that controls the read mechanism and electronics of how data is actually written to the platters in the hard drive.  There is no defined standard that is used and each company utilizes the encoding that it deems optimal.  Furthermore, each model of the hard drive and even the firmware used on that model would have to be known in order to recover information.  This is contrary to the situation with a CD/DVD.  The data recorded is always recorded in the same manner.  Therefore, if you have a CD/DVD it can be read with the standard reader contained in every computer.  Contrast this with the hard drive.  Each hard drive is self contained.  It has the reader and firmware in the drive which is then used to recover the information that is written on the disks.

By shredding a hard drive and mixing the shred with other hard drive materials, the process of recovering data become virtually impossible.  A fragment of a drive would need to be recovered and then a process utilizing magnetic force microscopy (MFM) would have to be employed. This is the only process that does not require the platters of the hard drive to spin and the heads to read the data.  The MFM allows the data to be viewed in an encoded format.  However, the logistics are staggering.  The MFM takes a picture of each bit on the disk.  Each picture will be 100 bytes in size.  For a 20 Gig drive approximately 160 billion bits would need to be photographed.  Secondly, each photograph would need to be analyzed by an expert to interpret each bit.  Any error in reading or interpretation would produce meaningless data results.

In order to reduce the chance of recover-ability of data, a hard drive should be separated from the casing which contains the firmware and model information.  Alternately, the platters can be destroyed through a degaussing process whereby a strong magnetic field of sufficient force is directed on the hard drive.  Unfortunately, after degaussing, the drive appearance will remain the same and the hard drive would have to be tested in order to ensure the destruction of the data on the platter.  Physical destruction through shredding of a hard drive is the clearest means of visually ensuring that the data contained on the platters is unrecoverable on a practical basis.  The platters are physically destroyed and separated from the information bearing cases in which they were housed.  The resulting shredded materials make it virtually impossible to recover any data that is contained on them and the security of the information will be ensured.

The IRS reports that 641,052 taxpayers were the victim of identity theft in calendar year 2011.  The significant increase in identity theft of the past few years has overwhelmed the IRS.  TIGTA found that identity theft cases were not worked timely and it can take more than a year to resolve the problem for the taxpayer.

TIGTA recommended the following:

1) establish accountability for the Identity Theft Program;

2) implement a process to ensure that IRS notices and correspondence are not sent to the address listed on the identity thief’s tax return;

3) conduct an analysis of the letters sent to taxpayers regarding identity theft;

4) ensure taxpayers are notified when the IRS has received their identifying documents;

5) create a specialized unit in the Accounts Management function to exclusively work identity theft cases;

6) ensure all quality review systems used by IRS functions and offices working identity theft cases are revised to select a representative sample of identity theft cases;

7) revise procedures for the Correspondence Imaging System screening process;

8) ensure programming is adjusted so that identity theft issues can be tracked and analyzed for trends and patterns.

The IRS agreed with all of TIGTA’s recommendations.

Click on the following link to read the complete report:

http://www.treas.gov/tigta/auditreports/….

This is an example of another obstacle faced by those victimized by identity theft.  By consistently shredding sensitive, information bearing documents, the probability of having an identity stolen is reduced.  Further information can be obtained about shredding services at xpresshred.com.

The process for rectifying an occurrence of identity theft can be very time consuming, frustrating and costly.  Furthermore, the perpetrator of the identity theft is unlikely to ever be caught.  Unfortunately, there is a very big return to risk calculation that a thief makes.  If they are ever caught, the consequences are much less than violent crime and the potential for illicit gain are much greater.  Consider that a violent criminal could mug or rob a person of their wallet or purse.  They may get $100 in cash and access to credit cards which will quickly be turned off and changed.  The robber is usually able to be visually identified by the victim or other witnesses.  If caught, this robber may get 10 years in prison.   However, an identity thief with access to the personal information of a victim can obtain credit for thousands of dollars in a victim’s name.  The victim may not even learn of the crime for a period of months, at which point the damage is done.  The thief is not seen by the victim and is very difficult to identify.  The first obstacle in catching a thief is legal jurisdiction.  A victim may live in Colorado, have their identity stolen by a person in New York and the fraudulent credit is used to purchase items or services in Florida.  Which legal authority will pursue this crime?  Furthermore, authorities have little time to spend chasing identity thieves that operate on a small scale.  Therefore, the chances of actually being caught by a thief are small.

The steps that a victim must take call for the immediate filing of a police report to detail the identity theft.  Most police departments are now more open to filing the report due to the increasing frequency of identity theft.  With the report filed, contact must be made to the three major credit reporting agencies:  Experian, Equifax and Transunion and notifying them of the identity theft and placing a fraud alert.  They will place a credit hold on the account of the victim so that no further credit can be obtained without specific approval.  Then the fraudulent charges must be addressed.  This becomes the time consuming and frustrating part.  The Federal Trade Commission also provides detailed information on the steps to take in order to remedy an occurrence of identity theft.   More information may be obtained at the Federal Trade Commission website at https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/features/feature-0014-identity-theft

Everyone should obtain a yearly credit report to ensure that their identity is still secure.  A report is available free of charge by going to www.annualcreditreport.com.  Prevention is the best activity a person can employ to reduce the chances of identity theft.

1. Don’t leave outgoing mail in an unsecured mailbox.  Particularly bills being paid with checks.
2. Shred or properly dispose of unsolicited offers of credit and consider “opting out” of credit card solicitations.
3. If a personal shredder is used, mix the shred with other refuse.  Don’t throw away the shred in the plastic bags that are provided.  This isolates the important information in one place and it may be able to be reconstructed.
4. Protect your social security information.  Don’t carry your card in a wallet or purse.  Only give out your number if absolutely necessary.  Ask to provide other identifying information as a substitute.  The less places that your information is available, the better for identity protection.

Also, be alert for unusual credit activity to determine if you have been victimized.  Mail that does not arrive as expected for bills, etc.  Be aware of any denials of credit that are received when no credit was applied for.  If calls are received for payments of goods or services that were not ordered, it may be another indicator that the identity may have been used by a thief.

Identity protection requires constant vigilance.  By taking appropriate steps to guard personal information and being vigilant for any unusual activities, the risk of identity theft can be reduced and the damages that result if it does occur can be mitigated by swift action on the part of the conscientious consumer.