Physical Information Security

Both large companies and individuals pay significant sums every year to protect their electronic data—installing antivirus software, hiring identity protection services, and employing hardware designed to be as secure as possible. Individuals, however, tend to spend far less time, money, and effort, on physical security.

The safe storage, organization, and disposal of vital documents should be part of any individual’s credit and identity protection strategy. Large companies follow a number of protocols meant to secure physical documents, from shredding to simply locking doors. Most of these measures are possible for the individual who wants to secure their own important documents, though very few people go through the relatively painless process of doing so.

Complete Document Disposal

Common sense dictates that all documents containing valuable information should be shredded—bank and credit card statements, tax records, cancelled checks, etc. However, there are more innocuous documents that should meet this same fate, such as credit card offers, utility bills, phone records, and old medical records. If a thief gets hold of just one vital piece of information—namely your Social Security number—practically every piece of mail you get is a possible fraud waiting to happen.

(Up until not very long ago, many organizations—universities, utility companies, even states issuing driver’s licenses—were still using peoples’ Social Security numbers as their ID numbers within that organization. Luckily this practice has largely ended, but it’s worth checking your various ID and account numbers to make sure that none of those old Social Security-based numbers made it through.)

As such, shredding all discarded mail is a good habit to get into. You won’t miss anything, and it’s all headed to the same place anyway. Shredders can cost from $25 up to nearly $3,000, but for home use a cross-cut shredder costing under $100 will do the job just fine. (Avoid strip-cut shredders, as they only cut paper into long strips that are much easier to put together.) Just dispose of every piece of unwanted mail in the shredder immediately, and you won’t have to worry about any of those scenarios in which criminals can hijack your identity.

Complete Document Storage

Storing valuable documents involves more than just protecting those papers from thieves. In fact, there is a laundry list of reasons to keep your most important documents—birth and marriage certificates, Social Security cards, car titles—locked down. Fire, flood, or any other natural disaster can mean a complete loss. Safes are the best option for these most important documents and valuables, as they will resist natural disasters as well as a burglar’s desire to take them.

However, as most safes are fairly small, you’ll probably need additional document storage. Lockable filing cabinets fit the bill nicely, and come in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on the space you have available. In terms of security they also make sense, as even the small locks on a filing cabinet are enough to deter most would-be thieves. If you want additional security in place, you can always use measures that larger companies use and create a system of locks—a locked cabinet inside a locked room with only one key, for example.

Such extra measures should only be necessary if you have a significant number of important documents in your home—from a small business, for example, with client data in your office as well as your own. For most people, however, a simple safe attached to the home itself, along with a locked filing cabinet and a decent shredder for unwanted documents, should cover all the physical security bases.