paper shredders Archives

What Documents Should You Shred After Filing Your Taxes?

April 26, 2021 at 6:16 pm by Amanda Canale

Ah, tax season. A time to reflect and reevaluate on the past year’s finances, and a wonderful excuse for some major spring cleaning!

In this blog, we’ll break down all of the documents you can say, “bye-bye” to and the ones you may want to keep around for a bit longer. It’s important to note that this is simply a condensed breakdown, but more information on record retention policies (RRP) can be found in our blog, Records Retention Schedules: When Will Your Data Expire?

Bye-Bye Junk!

ATM and deposit receipts: These can be shredded once they are compared against your monthly statement.
Credit card bills: Once your bill has been paid, shred away!
Utility bills: Keeping utility bills once they are paid is not always necessary. However, it is recommended to save all of your utility bills for one year if you are claiming a home office deduction.
Pay stubs: Pay stubs should be saved for one year but once your taxes are filed, they are ready for the shredder.
Insurance policies: Once your policy is renewed (either with the same insurance company or a different one), feel free to feed it to your shredder.
Receipts: No need to pile up your desk or filing cabinet with every UberEats and Postmates receipt from the past year. It is only necessary to keep receipts from bigger purchases or items that will be deducted.
Monthly bank statements: Your monthly bank statements should be saved for one full year and then shredded after you receive your annual statement.
Monthly investment statements: All annual statements and the most recent monthly statement should be kept on file; however, feel free to shred the rest!

Documents for Next Tax Season

Income: Whether your income comes from wages, interest, or other business, any W-2, 1099, or K-1 forms, and bank and brokerage statements should be kept leading up to your next tax return.
Deductions and credits: Any receipts pertaining to childcare, medical and dental expenses, using your home as your business, alimony, or charitable donations should be kept leading up to your next tax return. In addition, any receipts or invoices, cancelled checks, and bank or credit card statements.
Home and property documents: Whether they are closing statements, proof of payments, insurance records, or home and property renovation receipts, these types of documents should all be kept for a year leading up to tax season.
Investments: Any and all 1099 and 2439 forms, brokerage statements, and mutual fund statements should also be kept prior to filing your taxes.

With all of this being said, it is important to mention that there are some financial documents that should be kept for a specific amount of time after you file your taxes. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has three years to assess additional tax and audit returns, meaning it would be a smart move to keep any documentation to support your recent claim should be kept on file.

Shred Away!

Now is the fun part: shredding time! While there are various ways to destroy a paper document (as detailed in our recent blog, How NOT to Destroy Paper Documents), we at SEM know it to be best practice to use a high security paper shredder (no, big box store shredders won’t cut it — pun intended!) when destroying all of your end-of-life paper documents. By adopting a secure shredder policy, you can be sure your financial information does not get into the wrong hands. We suggest the SEM Model 1324P deskside shredder for all of your at-home shredding needs. This device offers a DIN 66399 P-4 particle.

P-7, shown above, is the standard for the destruction of classified material on paper

At SEM we have an array of high-quality NSA listed/CUI and unclassified paper shredders to meet any regulation. Any one of our exceptional sales team members are more than happy to help answer any questions you may have and help determine which machine will best meet your destruction needs.

Security Engineered Machinery Supports Asheville Man’s Budding Paper Shredder Business

January 14, 2021 at 8:30 am by Amanda Canale

Security Engineered Machinery, Co., Inc. (SEM), global leader in high security information end-of-life solutions, donated a commercial-grade paper shredder to Asheville, NC resident Austin Ferrell after seeing a local news story featuring Ferrell and his years-long passion for shredding. Ferrell, who goes by the alter-ego “Austin Shreds,” has made a name for himself in his local community by spending his free time shredding paper documents for area businesses and organizations. Ferrell operates out of an office he shares with his mother, Janet Price-Ferrell.

“As a parent of a kid with a disability, you’re always looking for something that your kid enjoys,” said Price-Ferrell. “He will shred for three or four hours a day!” Price-Ferrell added that she was ecstatic for her son to receive his new shredder, adding that “The one he was using did not keep up with him!”

An advocate for others like Austin with intellectual disabilities, Janet Price-Ferrell is also Executive Director of FIRST, a non-profit organization that provides persons with disabilities and their families with programs and advocacy to support and foster healthy, inclusive, and self-determined lives.

“All of us at SEM were so touched by Austin’s story and our shared passion for paper shredding,” added Heidi White, SEM Director of Marketing. “SEM’s heritage is in paper shredders — our company founder actually innovated the world’s first paper disintegrator — and so we wanted to show our support for this incredible young man and his business venture by sending him an equipment upgrade.”

SEM arranged for white glove shipment of a brand-new paper shredder for Ferrell to utilize. The SEM Model 2125PSP is a robust, commercial grade shredder, making it faster, more durable, and far less prone to jams than Ferrell’s existing shredder. It also offers a DIN 66399 P-5 (2mm x 15mm cross-cut) final particle size, making it a more secure shredder option for Ferrell’s blooming business.

When he received his new shredder, Austin was ecstatic to say the least. “He kept saying, ‘awesome,’” said Price-Ferrell. “He shredded for three hours straight and it never overheated.”

Those living in the Asheville, NC area can bring their paper documents to Austin Shreds for destruction in exchange for a donation. To learn more, visit the Austin Shreds Facebook page. To see Austin and the paper shredder in action, visit our YouTube page here.

DARPA Shredder Challenge

December 1, 2020 at 8:15 am by Amanda Canale

In late 2011, Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a research and development agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, invited computer scientists and puzzle enthusiasts alike to take part in an interesting challenge: reconstruct pieces of paper for a grand prize of $50,000. Sounds fairly simple, right? Well, what if those pieces of paper had previously gone through an industrial shredder? Doesn’t seem as easy now, does it?

The goal of the five-puzzle challenge was for participants to develop software that could be used to identify and assess various document reconstruction tactics. The hope was for the U.S. national security community to utilize these new tactics in war zones and use them to identify vulnerabilities to sensitive information within our own country. Participants started their developments on 27 October 2011 and concluded just 33 days later after all five puzzles were successfully solved by a trio of San Franciscan computer programmers.

The winning team, who went by the name, “All Your Shreds Belong to US”, created an algorithm that automatically reconstructed the 10,000 pieces of paper (yes, you read that right: 10,000) based on various physical aspects of the shred, such as shred angle, shred size, and paper marks. Other teams’ strategies ranged from crowdsourced-style methods to relying heavily on manual reconstruction. While the majority of us would rather do anything else than spend approximately 600 hours putting pieces of paper back together, the same cannot be said for hackers and thieves; if it’s going to grant them access to your most sensitive information and confidential data or government defense secrets, then chances are they will rise to the occasion!

There are currently several different secure shredder types ranging from DIN levels P-1 to P-7, with level seven being the most secure particle size. However, there is a lot to be said about modern document destruction if a challenge such as this was so successfully completed, especially within such a small timeframe. If this challenge used level P-7 particles and the winning team not only won the challenge but succeeded two days early, what does that say about the safety of our end-of-life data? Is it safe to assume that there is always the possibility that someone could turn your trash into their own personal treasure? While there currently is no level P-8, we have the next best thing here at SEM (and yes, it is exclusive to us!).

The SEM Model 344 is the next greatest paper shredder as it is offers an even more secure shred size that we like to call P-7+! The Model 344 is the only high security paper shredder on the market that offers a particle size of 0.8mm x 2.5mm, making it 50% smaller than the current National Security Agency (NSA) requirement. This compact, portable, energy saving option is listed on the NSA/CSS Evaluated Products List and has a throughput of 12 reams of paper per hour when feeding five sheets at a time.

When it comes to end-of-life data destruction, it is always best to err on the side of caution. That’s why at SEM, we want you to future proof the destruction of your most sensitive and confidential data with our Model 344. By opting for in-house data destruction methods, you and your company or agency are making the most cost-effective, safe, and secure decision. Still don’t have you fully convinced? Think about it like this: if a group of scientists and puzzle enthusiasts can piece back together your data in their free time, imagine what a full-time hacker could do.

Shredding Through Time

July 28, 2020 at 10:00 am by Flora Knolton

Paper shredding can first be accredited to Abbot Augustus Low of New York, who filed a patent for an improved wastepaper receptacle in 1909, sparking the first idea for a paper shredder. Low’s invention was intended for use in banks and counting houses, but unfortunately was never manufactured.

The first known mechanical paper shredder actually was created in Germany in 1935. A man, Adolf Ehinger, was inspired by a hand-crank pasta maker to create a machine to shred sensitive material after being questioned about anti-Nazi literature in his garbage. The machine was cranked inside of a wooden frame that was large enough to handle one sheet of paper. Later in the 1940s, he added a motor to power the shredder and sold the shredders to a host of government entities.

During the cold war, Ehinger’s shredder increased in popularity. In 1959, his company, EBA Maschinenfabrik, created the first cross-cut shredder that cut paper into tiny bits for an increased security level. To this day, EBA Maschinenfabrik continues to design and produce shredders under the name of Krug & Priester, who purchased the business in 1998.

Since Ehinger’s invention, shredders have played a role in many important times in history. Before the 1980s, shredders were nearly exclusively used by the government, military, and banking industry. But in 1987, the U.S Supreme Court that ruled that your garbage, once brought to the curb outside, is considered public property. Come the 1990s, statistics proved how corporate and personal identity theft had skyrocketed. Most of the public wasn’t even aware of the existence of paper shredders until they began to surface in connection with scandals such as Watergate in the 1970s, Iran-Contra in the 1980s, and Enron in 2002. The increase in identity theft and scandals caused concern which led to businesses and individuals burning their paper waste. Because it is so detrimental to the environment, this increase in burning led to laws prohibiting the incineration of trash, which had the effect of businesses and regular citizens turning to paper shredders for secure document disposal. Despite the negative stories and unfair reputation from the media about how they are used to cover the tracks of the guilty, Ehinger’s purpose was to protect the innocent. Throughout the 20^th century, paper shredders have become more secure by using cross-cut methodology and creating smaller shreds.

Privacy laws such as the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA), The Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACTA), The Family Educational Right and Privacy Act (FERPA) to name a few, render organizations responsible for protecting customer/consumer information. It’s important for businesses to legally comply with these regulations and it is also a best practice for business to routinely destroy data that has outlived retention periods. Shredding paper opens up many environmentally-friendly disposal alternatives that are better than tossing it all in the dumpster.

In 1968, in what is now known as “The Pueblo Incident”, Navy intelligence vessel USS Pueblo was captured by North Korean patrol boats. According to U.S. reports, the Americans tried their best to destroy all the classified information aboard the ship. Unfortunately, with the volume of material on board it was impossible to destroy it all prior to capture. Korean War Veteran and founder of SEM Leonard Rosen was struck with the idea that there has to be a better way to destroy classified information. Within weeks of hearing this news, he had developed the concept for the world’s first paper disintegrator and the SEM legacy of destruction devices had begun. It’s fascinating that Ehinger and Rosen were both motivated by protecting their countries’ intelligence for the greater good of humanity at the time to produce such ideas.

SEM may have coined the term “disintegrator”, but every device from SEM is always quality. SEM’s high security paper shredders are NSA/CSS listed and reduce waste to particles no larger than 1mmx 5mm. All SEM NSA listed paper shredders meet the requirements of the new CUI security regulation that requires CUI documents to be shredded and meet . The Model 344 paper shredder produces particles of 0.8mm X 2.5mm, which is half the size of the current NSA requirements, for those looking for the highest security. Many of SEM’s paper shredders are factory installed with an automatic oiler, but for those looking to reduce their carbon footprint, the Model 1201CC paper shredder may be what’s necessary. The Model 1201CC was the first high security paper shredder tested oil-free by the NSA and listed on the NSA EPL for classified document destruction. Oil free shredders save money on oil refills and are perfect for the eco-conscious consumer.

Buying a paper shredder is an insurance policy that helps protect sensitive information. Our trash is not “our” trash once it’s outside, and its vital to be conscientious about what is being thrown away. Paper shredders have been around for over 100 years now and will continue to be necessary even as more offices vow to go paperless. Paper will still be around, and SEM has all the Classified and Unclassified paper shredders to meet your media destruction needs.

One Person’s Trash Really is Another’s Treasure

June 15, 2020 at 9:02 pm by Flora Knolton

It is typical for companies to focus more on the security of their digital network than on physical protection of documents and data. Physical security tends to fall by the wayside even though it’s fairly easy for criminals to go dumpster diving. If the organization doesn’t end up losing all important assets in a breach, it’s common it could still suffer from irreversible brand damage. In 2007, Radio Shack dumped more than 20 boxes containing personally identifiable information (PII) for thousands of customers. A man found rummaging through the dumpster found the boxes and reported it. Shortly following, the State of Texas filed a civil lawsuit against Radio Shack for exposing its customers to identity theft. The state’s lawsuit claims the company “failed to safeguard the information by shredding, erasing, or other means, to make it unreadable or undecipherable before disposing of its business records.” Cases like this are common, and identity theft has become a major problem worldwide.

The Recycling Myth

Many believe that recycling is a very different process from trash processing and somewhat safer in terms of data security. This understanding is far from the truth. People mostly understand that trash ends up in landfills where anyone could find sensitive material. At the same time, many people often think that recycling is safer for confidential documents since they will be destroyed and repurposed instead of being shipped to a landfill. In actuality, recycling is not transported securely. In fact, recycling trucks look like every other garbage truck, where documents and other personally identifiable information (PII) will be blowing around in the truck before being dropped off at the recycling facility. On average, recyclables sit on sorting floors from anywhere from 2-4 weeks before being destroyed. The remnants don’t sort themselves either; dozens of employees’ sort what the machines cannot and will have access to documents before they are destroyed. As opposed to destroying the documents yourself, there is absolutely no way of proving sensitive information has been destroyed when you send it to the recycler.

Protect the Customers and Employees, Protect the Business

Consumer privacy legislation has been increasing around the United States within the last few years. Recent laws such as the NY SHIELD Act and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) are giving consumers more rights relating to their access and deletion of sharing personal information that is collected by businesses. These laws give consumers a large amount of freedom over their personal information, which could open up a host of severe penalties and lawsuits for companies that fail to comply with these regulations. This trend is also being seen in other nations such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and India’s Personal Protection Bill, and it is expected to continue on this uptick everywhere in the near future. Knowing this, there is a heavier weight on organizations to protect customers’ personal and secure information or the company will be at risk for mishandling said information and could be subject to harsh monetary penalties. Employees have the same legal right to privacy as customers and expect their employer to keep their information secure as well. At the end of the day, the stakeholders will pull the most weight, and it’s important to treat their information the same as how you’d want your own sensitive information dealt with/disposed of.

Secure Your Disposal of Records

Businesses have a choice when it comes to how they want to dispose of their paper records, usually weighing the convenience, cost, and legal risks involved with complying to their industries’ standards or regulations. In U.S. government law, secure disposal is required when a record contains classified, controlled unclassified (CUI), or personally identifiable information (PII) such as address, phone number, names, emails, social security numbers, and more that can be used to identify an individual. It’s easy to consider the cost when opting for a third-party shredding company, but can you really be certain that all the documents are being shredded? It’s impossible to tell. Despite widespread adoption of electronic health record systems, most hospitals still use both paper and electronic documents for patient care. Healthcare cyberattacks overall are on the rise, with nearly 32 million patient records breached in 2019. It’s crucial to find a balance between digital security and physical destruction in the workplace. Increasing communication between colleagues so they are informed of appropriate processes can help mitigate potential breaches in regard to disposing of information no longer retained by the institution.

No matter what the industry, at SEM we have many high-quality NSA Listed/CUI and unclassified paper shredders to meet any regulation. For those looking for an eco-friendly device that’s also listed on the NSA EPL for Paper Shredders, we recommend the Model 1201CC High Security Shredder. It was tested oil-free by the NSA for classified document destruction due to its specially designed cutting head that is also fully replaceable, lowering total cost of ownership. Destroying physical data in-house may seem like a costly purchase in the short term but could send up saving a company exponentially in the long run by preventing breach. With regular maintenance, a quality shredder such as the 1201CC can last a lifetime. We’re happy to help answer any questions concerning personal or regulated shredding needs.

A History of Data Reconstruction and Why Proper Data Destruction Matters

January 20, 2020 at 8:00 am by Paul Falcone

Throughout history, data has been recorded and documented in many different ways. From painting on walls to writing scribes to printing books to digitizing information, the world will continue to find increasingly unique and complicated ways to store and share all of this information. But with each of these developments comes a new challenge, because no matter how many new ways are created to store and share data, there will be an equal number of ways to destroy and lose that data.

And once that data is destroyed, is it really gone forever?

Today, when media is not destroyed with high security end-of-life equipment, there is almost always a chance that some, if not most, data can be recovered. But in the past, it was much harder to recover records that were seemingly destroyed beyond repair. This didn’t stop talented groups of people, enemies in war, and researchers from attempting to try, and this post will examine a few of the notable times in the last century that data recovery was used when all was thought to be destroyed or lost.

The US Embassy in Tehran, Iran

In November 1979, after years of tension across various issues, the Iranian Revolution erupted as a push back against the Shah leadership to replace the government with an Islamic republic. At the time, the US backed the Shah leadership that was being revolted against, and, during the revolution the embassy located in the Iranian capital, Tehran, was overrun by students in the city who were part of the revolution. This takeover began what is now known as the 444 Day Crisis, a hostage situation that would define Jimmy Carter’s presidency and last over a year to see its eventual conclusion.

Acting as fast as they could, CIA personnel within the embassy tried to destroy and shred all of the classified materials that resided within the complex until the last moment of capture, but unfortunately they couldn’t destroy everything. It turns out that even the classified materials that were shredded were not completely safe from the Iranian forces that moved in, holding the now 52 hostages prisoner within the embassy. During the next 444 days, and the years that followed, the Iranian government dedicated a team to focus on manually reconstructing the shredded data, eventually publishing the classified materials for the world to see.

The documents contained a variety of classified materials and top secret information. Some of the information contained details on US plans to recruit high ranking Iranian officials, journalists, and more. They also included information on how to open safes within the embassy, photos of Russian air bases, and detailed biographies of persons of interest in Iran and the surrounding nations. This loss of classified data was considered to be the single largest loss of materials at the time, and the effects of the hostage situation and revolution are still felt around the world today.

The National Personnel Records Center Fire

On 12 July, 1973 fire alarms sounded as the Military Personnel Records Center had a fire break out on the sixth floor, the top floor of the building. This branch of the National Personnel Records Center was home to over twenty million records of past United States service members from the 20th century. All with no duplicates, back up, or photocopy. The fire would continue to burn out of control in the building that was over 1.2 million square feet, nearly three football fields long by one football field wide, and ultimately took two days until the fire was completely extinguished.

At the time of the fire, over 52 million records were housed in the Military Personnel Records Center. By the time the fire was put out on July 14, the entire sixth floor was destroyed and an estimated 16-18 million records were damaged or lost, including roughly 80 percent for Army personnel discharged between 1912 and 1960 and 75 percent for Air Force personnel discharged between 1947 and 1964. Since no backups of any of the records existed, damaged and partial records were saved and documented in the hopes that some form of recovery could be possible.

Almost immediately, a team was assembled to work on a data reconstruction initiative. Records that were only partially damaged were manually reconstructed, while the majority were stored to be accessed at a later date. These records were vacuum dried and then frozen to store away so that the paper wouldn’t degrade any more than the deterioration that had already occurred. A team of 30 full time employees work specifically with responding to families requesting information related to files lost or damaged in the fire. An additional 25 employees work on preservation, attempting to store and reconstruct the damaged files. In the beginning, any reconstruction effort was done manually by these 25 employees, using nothing but their eyesight to try and reassemble the burnt pieces.

Advancements in technology in recent years have allowed for faster and easier reconstruction. While still difficult, infrared sensors and cameras can now pick up additional data that the naked eye cannot see. These exposed patterns from the infrared sensors allow data reconstruction specialists to take pictures showing this data. It is then further manipulated in software like Photoshop, ultimately allowing specialists to identify and place pieces together to complete the puzzle that would have been impossible years prior.

The team continues to receive over 5,000 requests a day and are constantly observing new technologies that can aid in reconstructing the lost information.

The Columbia Space Shuttle

On 1 February 2003, the space shuttle Columbia was making its re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere after 17 days in space. Unknown to the team members, a piece of the shuttle’s insulation foam had become detached from the space shuttle, causing it to catch on fire and combust upon its re-entry. The disaster resulted in the loss of life of everyone on board and the shuttle completely disintegrating as it fell to earth. Six months later, in a muddy riverbed, a rotational hard drive was found that was believed to be from the shuttle, and Kroll Ontrack was hired to try to recover the data off of it.

The drive was present on the Columbia during the explosion upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Then, after the explosion, the drive fell over 40 miles at terminal velocity while on fire into a riverbed, where it stayed for six months prior to being found. Ultimately, once the team finished their work, over 99% of the data that resided on the drive had been recovered.

To begin the data reconstruction process, the exterior of the drive was carefully cleaned and deconstructed, allowing the team to extract the rotating metal plates. After carefully reassembling the plates to working condition, they were placed in new hardware that allowed them to spin again and see the information that had been gathered from outer space. Ontrack today continues to use their expertise to extract data off of media that is deemed impossible to recover.

Why Proper Data Destruction Matters

Why do all of these data reconstruction stories matter? Apart from them being incredible feats of (both good and bad) data reconstruction, it drives home the important message that disposing of data properly is imperative. A drive falling from outer space on fire is not secure. Shredding documents through embassy shredders is not enough. A fire burning for over a day that destroys 18 million documents wasn’t enough to destroy everything completely.

So, if data is present that is classified, top secret, or even contains personally identifiable information (PII), precautions need to be taken to ensure that data is disposed of securely. Having the correct equipment, and finding the right data decommissioning plan, is the first important step. That way data that is supposed to be gone forever, stays gone forever.

Also, if you think you lost data, chances are there’s a way to get it back. Even if you fell from space.

How many paper shredders do you need?

June 27, 2018 at 10:40 am by SEM

Some guidelines to help you decide.

Paper shredders range in size from low volume desk-side office models, to departmental shredders consisting of medium and heavy-duty shredders, upwards to larger centralized industrial-sized bulk volume shredders.

Paper shredders range in security levels too, from NSA regulated DIN 66399 P-7 paper shredders for classified information and CUI to Unclassified and commercial shredders considered P-4 and P-5 cross-cut models or just simply protecting your own Privacy Act materials for business use. So, how many shredders do you need? Will a large centralized unit or a smaller number of departmental or office shredders make more sense to your organization’s destruction requirements, security needs, and budget?

When choosing a paper shredder, you must first consider your security requirement. What level or particle size shredder is going to meet that requirement? Next you must consider your volume. What shredder is going to offer the sheet capacity, bin capacity, and motor size to meet the demands of your destruction requirements? How much shredding will you need to do either daily, weekly, or monthly to handle your organization’s destruction requirements? Will you be better suited doing volume shredding daily, weekly, or monthly? Or would your organization be better off shredding as needs arise, placing shredders in hallways and copier/mailrooms?

Using a centralized paper shredder can provide advantages to any destruction program. Volume of paper: having the ability to destroy greater volumes of paper in a shorter period of time. This would allow your organization more time to save or store these materials prior to destroying them. Utilizing one or a select few to collect the materials and operate the shredder: A centralized shredder can also reduce overall labor, preventative maintenance costs, and waste collection.

Departmental and office shredder models could be a greater convenience and allow for immediate destruction. There would be less accountability for collecting and storing documents as workers would have easy access for destroying their own sensitive materials by utilizing a paper shredder placed in their work area. Multiple shredders might mean more preventative maintenance, plastic bags, lubrication oil, and waste collection. It might also eliminate the need for secure storage containers as workers would shred as materials as needed.

There are several advantages and disadvantages for having a centralized shredder versus multiple shredder units placed within a facility. These mostly depend on what your budget, volume of materials, security level, and requirements dictate. SEM has over 50 years of experience in the information destruction solutions business and this is where our expertise can help you decide which shredder solution would be most beneficial to your organization.

Shredder Training is the Key to Maximizing the Performance and Life of your Destruction Equipment

July 11, 2017 at 1:59 pm by SEM

Shredders, disintegrators, briquettors, optical media destroyers, HDD/SSD shredders, HDD crushers and degaussers are critical components of your overall information security program. Keeping these systems in good working order is extremely important, and easy to do with proper user training.

Probably the biggest factor in the longevity of any equipment is tied to proper training in the operation, daily maintenance and preventative maintenance. Depending on your equipment and site there are programs that can train your people to operate, maintain and troubleshoot so you avoid problems and keep the equipment up and running well.

Training can be done at your site with your equipment during a scheduled PM call, on a specific scheduled visit to your site, or at a training facility where factory service reps will go over all aspects of operation, daily maintenance, preventative maintenance as well as, tips and tricks to get the most of your systems and avoid the pitfalls. At the beginning of the training there will be a Q & A to help identify the issues of greatest concern to the group. During the training all participants are encouraged to ask questions and will have the opportunity to get “hands on” so they thoroughly understand the material being taught. After the training and a final Q & A each participant will be given a certificate of completion designating which equipment they were trained on. This is a great way for users to add additional value to their skill sets and company capabilities.

The training can be specialized to cover any and all the issues you may be having with your specific equipment, and discuss in detail how to fix and mitigate these in the future.

Some of the things your users will learn from attending training:

Changing knives, clearing and preventing jams, servicing dust filters, proper lubrication, testing belt tension, aligning conveyor belts, swapping out shredder heads-(depending on equipment) among many others.

The goal is maximizing machine availability for the organization and imparting the skills to help users diagnose and recognize potential issues before they become bigger problems.

And investment in a proper training program will pay dividends in equipment up time and save your organization money in the long run.

Click here for more information on SEM’s Preventative Maintenance and Service plans or call 800-225-9293.

SEM Paper Shredders Awarded Prestigious Eco-Friendly “Blue Angel” Certification

May 16, 2013 at 2:35 pm by SEM

Paper shredders manufactured for Security Engineered Machinery (SEM) by German based Krug and Priester GmbH and CO (K&P) have recently been awarded the prestigious “Blue Angel” certification. In addition to the precision and high quality typically found in German made products, these shredders are also loaded with a variety of environmentally friendly features that have earned them this highly sought-after certification.

The Blue Angel is only awarded to products and services which – from a holistic point of view – are of considerable benefit to the environment and, at the same time, meet high standards of serviceability, health, and occupational protection.

The Blue Angel is a German certification for products and services that have environmentally friendly aspects. It has been awarded since 1978 by the Jury Umweltzeichen, a group of 13 people from environment and consumer protection groups, industry, unions, trade, media and churches. Blue Angel is the oldest eco-label in the world, and it covers some 10,000 products in some 80 product categories.

To meet these eco-friendly standards, SEM shredders, that are manufactured by Krug and Priester (like the Model 244/4), integrate features that reduce noise, dust and emissions as well as an energy saving mode which generates no power after a brief period of non-use thus maximizing energy conservation.

After the introduction of Germany’s Blue Angel in 1978 as the first worldwide environmental label, other European and non-European countries followed this example and introduced their own national and supra-regional environmental labels. The common goal of these labels is to inform consumers about environmentally friendly products thereby giving global support to product-related environmental protection.

Learn more about our paper shredders here.

DARPA Impossible Shredder Challenge…Solved

December 8, 2011 at 10:37 am by SEM

In late October 2011, DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency) issued a challenge to computer scientists with a $50,000 reward if they could reconstruct shredded pages of paper.

The following excerpt from the DARPA Shredder Challenge website describes the competition.

Today’s troops often confiscate the remnants of destroyed documents in war zones, but reconstructing them is a daunting task. DARPA’s Shredder Challenge called upon computer scientists, puzzle enthusiasts and anyone else who likes solving complex problems to compete for up to $50,000 by piecing together a series of shredded documents.

The goal was to identify and assess potential capabilities that could be used by our warfighters operating in war zones, but might also create vulnerabilities to sensitive information that is protected through our own shredding practices throughout the U.S. national security community.

The Shredder Challenge was comprised of five separate puzzles in which the number of documents, the document subject matter and the method of shredding were varied to present challenges of increasing difficulty. To complete each problem, participants were required to provide the answer to a puzzle embedded in the content of the reconstructed document.

The challenge began on October 27, 2011 and concluded on December 2, 2011 after all five puzzles were successfully solved by a team of three computer programmers from San Francisco.

The San Francisco team additionally offered some insight into how they solved Puzzle #4.

The team used a combination manual/automated approach to solve the challenge puzzles. The first 3 were solved within the first 2 weeks of the challenge. After that, the team was stumped by puzzle #4. The difficulty was due to the fact that the words were irregularly spaced and written on unlined paper. By chance, one of the team members read an article about a little known government project that encouraged manufacturers of color laser printers to place tiny imperceptible yellow dots on printed pages so that the machine that printed them could be tracked. The team used a blue light filter and were able to see the dots. They credit those dots for giving them a road map of how to put the document together. A road map that ultimately led them to share in a $50,000 prize.

For more on the use of printer dots, read this article from USA Today:

“Printer dots raise privacy concerns”

To read more about how they did it check out these articles:

DARPA’s Almost Impossible Challenge to Reconstruct Shredded Documents: Solved

Team Claims $50,000 for Decoding Shredded Messages

Team Wins $50K, Restores 5 Shredded DARPA Docs in 33 Days

SEM Shred

Tag: paper shredders