How To Protect Confidential Data Over Christmas

The Christmas period is often great for business, with promotions such as Black Friday and customers heading out onto the high-street to buy gifts. Many companies, not just B2C, will see increased sales during this time of year, with potential clients planning their budgets for the next year. The festive period is also about employees, allowing them time to recharge and recuperate. As a result, businesses should do everything they can to ensure a smooth Christmas period.

However, the Christmas season is not without its downsides. One of the things that can destabilise the entire Christmas period is a data breach. With businesses indulging in Christmas parties, roast dinners and mince pies, data breaches, both for consumers and businesses, typically increase around this period, as cyber criminals understand that businesses, and their people, are most vulnerable. . Additionally, the majority of employees are out of office during the Christmas period, providing ample opportunity for malicious behaviour.

Many businesses will take extra measures and invest in document storage and document shredding services to ensure sensitive documents don’t fall victim to data breaches, whereas others will ensure their digital documents are encrypted and secure.

The Importance of Protecting Data Over the Christmas Period

The business wind down before the holidays can be extremely dangerous for companies of all shapes and sizes for a number of reasons.

Firstly, many businesses will only have skeleton staff meaning that there are less hands on deck if a data breach were to occur. Also, some employees might work remotely on insecure devices, increasing the potential for a data breach. As people are likely to be purchasing expensive gifts for family and friends, burglars will be looking for the perfect opportunity to strike. Given that data breaches cost businesses on average £3.58 million, they should be extremely wary of how their data is stored and handled - particularly during the Christmas holidays.

Cyber criminals will use a variety of methods to try and steal your data such as phishing, hacking and ransomware. But it’s not just cyber criminals you have to be aware of. Physical data breaches are also common and are often caused by inadequate document storage procedures.

5 Ways to Protect Your Data This Christmas

Implementing effective measures to protect your data means a better and stress-free festive period. Here are five practical steps businesses can take to protect their confidential data during the festive season.

1. Implement a clean desk policy (CDP)

Keeping a tidy office and storing confidential documents in a secure manner is a crucial first step to avoid a data breach over Christmas. Employees often leave notes from meetings on their desks, or private company data like payroll information or passwords to software, which, if found by third parties, could be used to hack a system or commit company fraud.

In their efforts to implement effective cybersecurity policies, businesses often forget the importance of protecting information stored on paper. A report published by the ICO in 2024 showed that during Q3 of 2024 77% of data security incidents were non-cyber, indicating the risk of leaving private information in unsecured locations around the office.

Implementing a clean desk policy (CDP), whereby employees are asked to declutter their desks at the end of each day, is an effective way to reduce this risk. However, this can be very difficult to do, even in smaller companies where upper management is able to monitor its implementation more closely.

An essential prerequisite is having the entirety of senior management on board; without pressure from the top, the average employee is unlikely to change their habits. Another important component of a CDP is communicating it efficiently across the company. Sending emails in the run-up to Christmas to explain the reasoning of the policy will help garner support and reduce the risk of physical information becoming lost or stolen.

2. Lock essential documents away

Shredding non-essential paper documents is crucial for protecting confidential data over Christmas. The recent GDPR legislation outlined stricter rules surrounding how businesses should handle and dispose of sensitive information, such as invoices, customer receipts or contracts, with companies facing huge fines for non-compliance.

Securely storing sensitive documents goes hand-in-hand with a CDP, as it allows companies to avoid unnecessary clutter by better organising their space. Locked consoles should be made available for employees, with different cabinets and lockers allocated to different categories of document, such as financial agreements or legal contracts.

Creating storage space in the office is clearly an easier task in smaller companies, where employees process fewer documents and create less waste. Medium and large businesses will find it more difficult to manage their document storage needs, which is why many choose to outsource the work to a secure document storage company such as Shredall SDS Group to save valuable time.

3. Shred non-essential documents

With businesses more likely to mishandle documents over Christmas, it is even more important for upper management to facilitate secure shredding of documents that are no longer needed. When employees start eating mince pies at their desk or drinking mulled wine at work they become more lax with how they dispose of non-essential documents.

For example, people may throw old files into the recycling bin on the pretence that third parties will be unable to retrieve them. However, these bins are often left unattended and documents can be misplaced or stolen, putting the security of the whole business at risk. Waste paper should always be securely destroyed, especially in the approach to Christmas. The most efficient way to do so is by shredding the files, preferably into extremely fine pieces to eliminate the risk of documents being reassembled.

Many in-house shredders are manual and produce strips that are too easy to put back together. Outsourcing shredding to specialists like Shredall SDS Group ensures that paper documents are disposed of securely. Shredall SDS Group even offers hard drive disposal services, eliminating the risk of any sensitive digital data being compromised.

4. Ensure employees working from home dispose of confidential documents

It’s easy for documents to be left out even when working from home, so it’s important to remind employees to dispose of any confidential information before they take their well earned Christmas break. Working from home is generally deemed to be secure, but there are several things that can be done to improve the security of a home office such as secure storage and extra training.

Since most people’s homes will be full of expensive gifts, thefts are more likely to happen, and this increases the risk of an employee's company laptop being stolen. Make sure no valuables are left on display and ensure all blinds are closed at nighttime. If malicious third parties can’t see anything of value, they are less likely to take the risk of breaking in.

5. Know who is in the office

Many companies hire contractors over the festive season to keep the office clean and well-maintained. It is important to know who is in the office performing these essential duties and to make sure that all confidential documents are safely stored away. If you operate out of a shared office building, let the building manager know who will be in the office over the festive period so they can keep an eye out for any unfamiliar faces.

Data crimes might be increasingly common online, but physical data breaches remain a very real threat to thousands of businesses. Therefore, ensure all confidential and sensitive documents are safely stored away to ensure that any unauthorised personnel can’t gain access.

How shredding services can help your business this Christmas

The Christmas holidays should be a well-deserved break for your business, a time to relax and regroup before tackling challenges in the New Year. Having fewer employees present puts businesses of all shapes and sizes at greater risk of being compromised and having their holidays ruined. Nevertheless, if the appropriate steps are taken to protect their data, both through cyber and physical security measures, businesses can enjoy the holidays in peace.

Why not take that extra step and consider a professional shredding service this Christmas? Shredding services are designed to securely destroy sensitive documents so that they don’t fall into the wrong hands.