By Preet Saini, Shred-it sales manager and data security expert

The New Year presents an opportunity to start fresh and get organized, and what better day to get on track than National Clean Your Desk Day?

A messy desk isn’t just bad for productivity, it also presents a major security threat to auto dealerships as documents containing sensitive information can easily get lost or stolen — putting customers at risk for identity theft and fraud. In fact, 22% of Americans who have been a victim of fraud said someone had stolen their information from physical paper documents (e.g. W-2, mail, paper files at work, etc.).

Tidying up for the New Year will help auto business owners keep employee, company and customer information safe as they prepare for two of the biggest sales events — Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Presidents’ Day. Here are three tips that will help to keep your auto dealership safe well beyond National Clean Your Desk Day.

Policies Matter

Beforegetting your dealership started on a document clean up or declutter, make sure you have a policy in place for disposing of confidential information. Thirty-one percent of auto dealers say they do not have a policy for storing or disposing of confidential paper documents, which puts commonly shared sensitive information in auto dealerships like customer bank accounts, license numbers, social security numbers and more at risk.

Look Out and Lock Up

Being mindful of a clean desk should not just be enforced on National Clean Your Desk Day, it is something that employees must do throughout the year. In order to maintain the security of both employee and client information, employees need to look out for any sensitive documents that may be laying around on their desks and file them away or put in a secure console for shredding. This will help to prevent information from getting lost or worse, falling into the wrong hands.

Accountability

You can help set your employees up for success by assigning a colleague to keep them accountable in their venture to becoming tidier. By assigning one or more employees to monitor the office space and enforce a Clean Desk Policy, your dealership is more likely to stay on track.

National Clean Your Desk Day is the perfect time to kick off these methods of organization. With the amount of personal data that auto dealers are in possession of, prioritizing data protection must be a business imperative all 365 days of the year.