Improve control over information destruction

Consolidate destruction programs for greater consistency

Perhaps nowhere is confidentiality more important than the financial services industry. When an individual's or organization's financial livelihood is at stake, ensuring that information is destroyed in a secure, controlled manner is of the utmost importance.

And for a financial institution with nearly 2,000 locations in multiple states, this concept has proven to be both a point of focus and considerable challenge. Due to the sheer size of the bank's operations, it opted to outsource the management of its information destruction program to external vendors.

"Our goal was to find a single vendor that offered an unbroken chain-of-custody and was able to destroy paper records in a secure, ecologically friendly manner."

- Program Manager, Regional Financial Institution

However, with multiple vendors managing the program, there was a lack of control that threatened to jeopardize the safety of confidential information — and open the institution up to considerable risk.

Program Manager, Regional Financial Institution

"Our goal was to find a single vendor that offered an unbroken chain-of-custody and was able to destroy paper records in a secure, ecologically friendly manner."

After analyzing potential providers, the bank chose Iron Mountain for a number of reasons — most notably, its ability to standardize destruction using industry best practices and a documented chain-of-custody.

With Iron Mountain Secure Shredding, the bank can safely and consistently destroy sensitive documents using services that are available on an ongoing or project-by-project basis. During implementation, Iron Mountain’s project team worked closely with the bank to integrate the program with its internal document management and disposal guidelines, enabling it to function as a seamless extension of the bank’s existing policies.

For example, Iron Mountain has stationed secure containers in strategic areas across the bank’s locations, so all employees have a convenient place to deposit any documents to be shredded.

"Sustainability is very important to us, and the Green Report is a phenomenal help. It's clean, concise and something we'll continue to use well into the future."

- Program Manager, Regional Financial Institution

Another critical factor the bank wished to address with this program was to extend its commitment to sustainability to all information destruction activities. To this end, the institution turns to Iron Mountain’s Green Report, which provides detailed information about the amount of paper it recycles and the resources it saves.

“Sustainability is very important to us, and the Green Report is a phenomenal help,” the institution’s program manager says. “It’s clean, concise and something we’ll continue to use well into the future.”

In addition, Iron Mountain has helped the bank manage unique projects as needed, including additional project management support to integrate the shredding program into new locations following an acquisition.

Results

With the help of Iron Mountain Secure Shredding, the regional financial institution was able to:

• Protect customer confidentiality by destroying information in a standardized, secure manner that complies with internal and external polices
• Save money and drive consistency by consolidating service and program administration with a single vendor
• Extend a commitment to ecological stewardship by destroying sensitive information in a conscientious, green manner
• Optimize the program to better align with budget and business needs by examining usage across the enterprise on an ongoing basis

“The reports and quarterly meetings have helped us dive deeper into the program and evaluate sites where we need to change the number of bins, update the frequency of pick-ups and identify and escalate any issues we encounter as needed,” the program manager says. “This has helped us ensure it functions as efficiently and cost effectively as possible.”