How to choose the right Shredder

There are three main criteria to look for when choosing the correct shredder to suit your needs. They are:

• Level of Security,
• Shredding Type
• Shredding Performance

1. Security Levels

Most Shredder companies today follow the German DIN standard 32757 to determine the maximum dimensions for strip and particle widths for the shredded documents. This Standard consists of 6-level of security (from 1 to 5) as shown below. As a rule of thumb for normal office and home usage and to make general documents illegible, security levels 1 and 2 are the right choice and for corporate usage which deal with lot of highly confidential and classified documents, then the levels 3 to 5 are exactly what you need.

SECURITY LEVELS ACCORDING TO DIN 32757

Security Level 1: Maximum strip width of 12 mm	Security Level 2: Maximum strip width of 6 mm	Security Level 3: Maximum strip width of 2 mm
Security Level 3: Maximum particle size of 4x80 mm	Security Level 4: Maximum particle size of 2x15 mm	Security Level 5: Maximum particle size of 0.8x12mm

2 Shredding Types

There are basically 2 types of shredding types namely the straight cut and cross cut (particle cut). The differences between them is that the straight cut gives higher throughput but the cross cut types give you higher data security and also a considerable reduction of shredded paper volume.

3 Shredding Performance

Choosing the right performance based on the number of pages to shred is an important criteria. Different models  can shred between 3 to 500 sheets at any one time. Therefore with our wide choice of paper shredders, you can be sure to find the right paper shredder to suit your need.