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Re: Checking visitors entering your facility

  • From: Leo Bicknell
  • Date: Thu Sep 20 20:21:22 2001

On Thu, Sep 20, 2001 at 07:54:07PM -0400, Richard Welty wrote:
> seriously, do you have any idea who is emptying your trash basket? do you
> really think that the bean counters took that sort of thing into
> consideration when they selected the firm who does that work?

This reminds me of a pet peeve.  Many business use services where
they provide boxes in your office and come around periodically and
shred / recycle them.  Many businesses find these more economical
than maintaining large shredders on prem.

These sound safe.  They shred it in front of a company rep, so you
can see your papers turn into bits.  That said, there are a number
of expected, and unexpected attacks:

1) Someone can take the whole box (say overnight), or pick the
   lock on a box.

2) A string with something sticky (say gum) can retrieve papers
   from a locked box.

3) I have personally witnessed one incident where while empting
   the unit into the shredder on the loading dock (in front of a
   company rep) a good number of papers were blown away in a strong
   wind.

4) I have yet to see an office where when the company collects,
   a company rep follows them receptical to receptical.  They
   generally dump them into a big hopper, and could take papers
   along the way.

So, if you're going to use them, at least have a company rep follow
the person from box to box to make sure there is no tampering.
Dump them often, so there are few papers in there, and little
opportunity for the night staff to take the box or fish some papers
out of it.

I guess it's better than nothing, but companies really should buy
shred-it-right-now type shredders.

-- 
Leo Bicknell - [email protected]
Systems Engineer - Internetworking Engineer - CCIE 3440
Read TMBG List - [email protected], www.tmbg.org