Who is Responsible for Improper PII Disposal in Arlington?
Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is information that can be used to trace an individual’s identity. If you own a business, you handle and store this information on all of your employees. Because you are handling someone else’s information, the line distinguishing who is responsible if there is a security breach is blurry.
If there is a PII breach, the responsibility falls on whoever is in charge of protecting that information. As a business owner, that will be you. You are entrusted with holding onto your employee’s documents, and therefore are responsible if something is lost or stolen.
Personally Identifiable Information
You may think you are holding onto very little PII for your employees, but you may be surprised. PII is anything that can be used on its own or in conjunction with other information to identify, contact or locate someone. Here is a list of common PII items:
- Full Name (if it’s not a common name i.e. John Smith)
- Home Address
- Telephone Number
- National Identification Number
- Vehicle Registration Plate Number
- Driver’s License Number
- Private Email Address
- Picture Depicting a Face
- Fingerprints
- Handwriting
- Date of Birth
- Digital Identity
- Genetic Information
- Birthplace
- Login Name, Screen Name, Nickname or Handle
Regardless of your industry or the size of your company, legal requirements exist on the federal, state, and local levels governing the use, storage, and destruction of PII.
Penalties for Failing to Properly Safeguard PII
Penalties for improperly safeguarding your employee’s PII vary case-by-case depending on the risk that the individual is identified. But, as a business owner, the National Archive and Records Administration holds that you are responsible for the breach as follows:
- Users are held personally accountable for their actions related to the PII entrusted to them. Failure to comply with the stated rules of behavior may result in administrative penalties or criminal sanctions.
- Supervisors are subject to disciplinary action for failure to ensure that their staff completes an agency-wide or job-specific PII training or for failure to take appropriate action upon discovering a suspected or actual breach of PII.
Get Free, No-Obligation Quotes on Proper PII Storage and Destruction in Arlington Today!
If you are a business owner in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex area and need assistance in safeguarding your employee’s personal information, Arlington Document Destruction can help! Our secure shredding partners will send you a certificate of destruction for every shred job completed so you can rest assured that your information has been destroyed. To get help with the safe storage and destruction of the PII you handle, fill out the form or give us a call at (817) 422-0719 for free quotes today!
255 N Center St
Arlington, TX 76011
Phone: (817) 422-0719
Email: info@arlingtondocumentdestruction.com