What is the Difference Between Offsite and Onsite Shredding?

Do you have clutter piled up on your property or in your office? However, you can’t just call a dumpster rental to clear it out because it might include some confidential or sensitive information that might be used against you. Since we cannot legally dispose of such information by ourselves, it is important to find out how to do it under legal obligations.

There is only one way in which any citizen is allowed to destroy sensitive information like patient files, client information, old contracts, ATM slips, pay slips, and most of all, any personal information that can be used in identity theft must be properly destroyed. The way in which it is acceptable by the law to dispose of such information is shredding.

Most people will think of paper shredding; however, shredding the evidence means that every bit of info, whether paper-based, electronic-based in a hard copy, or even if there is any personal information on old pill bottles, must be shredded.

Now there are two ways in which shredding is usually performed: offsite shredding and onsite or mobile shredding. You might wonder, what is the difference between offsite and onsite shredding? Below are some of the critical differences mentioned for each method.

What Is Offsite Shredding Service?

The Offsite shredding service is a method in which a client makes a call to the shredding facility and asks for a suitable time in which they can drop off the confidential stuff they wish to dispose of. Then a meeting time is fixed at which the client would come and hand over the stuff. There is another way of handling the stuff, in which the facility employees come to the premise of the client and take away the stuff which needs to be disposed of in a locked high-security van or truck.

Then, a date is set at which the shredding facility shreds the stuff. Clients can request to do the shredding in their presence and are contacted on that day. After the shredding is done, a certificate and video evidence is given to the client.

What Is Onsite Shredding Service?

In contrast to an Offsite shredding service, an onsite shredding service is about bringing the shredder to the client’s premise. Onsite or mobile shredding means a shredder can come to your place and do the shredding on the spot.

However, this is also not a single-step process; it is only convenient for those who cannot leave their houses or who have a lot of confidential information to dispose of and would prefer if the data never leaves the property in any compact form.

The potential client contacts the service and asks for locked consoles to keep all the sorted stuff there. After they have filled them out with all the precious old archives, the shredder truck is called, and the employees then film the process of shredding in the premise as a token of evidence. In the end, the certificate approved with NAID is given to the client along with evidence.

Conclusion

The key difference between offsite and onsite shredding is that the latter comes to your doorstep while the other one you have to go to. In terms of pricing, the offsite is cheaper, but if there is a threat of a leak, it is better to get everything shredded on your doorstep.