Great lakes accounting, inc. - creating safe, reliant disposal plan to secure client privacy

Creating Safe, Reliant Disposal Plan to Secure Client Privacy

Challenge:

An unmanageable amount of paper documents makes an accounting firm vulnerable to a breach in security.

Solution:

Iron Mountain Small Business Secure Shredding

Value:

• Protect against theft or damage to sensitive client information
• Free up essential real estate
• Take back valuable business hours

Established in 2008, Great Lakes Accounting, Inc. is an accounting firm that serves approximately 650 clients across the United States. The company offers full-service tax, accounting, payroll, and consultancy assistance to a wide variety of industries throughout the year.

In 2013, Great Lakes acquired another accounting firm that left it with a massive overflow of paper records. As a result, Great Lakes, a paperless firm, found itself responsible for several cabinets full of sensitive documents that would put its clients at risk if lost or discarded. President and Owner, Jason Heider, described the influx as a problem that required tremendous diligence and grunt work to secure and maintain.

"We have file cabinets full of tax returns, full of financial statements, supporting documents, [and] client documents that just made it an administrative nightmare in terms of trying to track stuff down" Heider said.

"We did not want to worry about [visitors] in our office picking up on data points that they should not otherwise be privy to."

-JASON HEIDER, PRESIDENT AND OWNER

Results

In light of the acquisition, Great Lakes set out to find a trusted vendor that could safely destroy irrelevant files. By partnering with Iron Mountain, Great Lakes was able to implement an onsite shredding plan that allowed the firm to securely dispose of its obsolete records, thereby protecting the privacy of its clients and the reputation of the organization itself.

"We did not want to worry about [visitors] in our office picking up on data points that they should not otherwise be privy to."