Checks for Disposing Sensitive HR information

As HR personnels you are used to dealing with a sensitive personal information of employees. We hope you have a process in place to dispose the old or unwanted information on employees and potential candidates collected while doing background screening. According to a federal rule, businesses and individuals must properly dispose off any information retrieved from various consumer reports. These rules have been formulated to avoid the information leaking in wrong hands and reduce the occurrences of identity thefts and other fraud.

The rule, which is part of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA), requires that related parties should “take reasonable measures to protect against unauthorized access to or use of the information in connection with its disposal.”
In simple terms, ‘disposal’ means discarding, removing, or throwing away. So, what does this mean for employers? Any information collected from a prospective employee cannot be just dumped in the trash can. A solid method of removal, like shredding should be implemented. It also means that if you plan to donate old computers (which have sensitive information about your employees), they should be thoroughly checked to make sure that all data has been erased.

This special disposal rule is applicable to individuals and companies that make use of consumer reports of different kinds; these include lenders, employers, landlords, car dealers, and people who run background checks on prospective house help such as nannies and caretakers. The modes of disposal are flexible and can be chosen to suit individual needs and situations. These methods vary with regard to the sensitivity of the information at hand, the cost and the advantages of various methods.

Overall, the point to keep in mind is that any sensitive information collected from other individuals must be destroyed; leaving nothing behind, that can be pieced together like a puzzle and used for fraudulent operations.