Printing at home and secure disposal

Paper doesn't have a password. Once work information is printed at home, all the technical controls that protect it, encryption, access permissions, audit logs, are gone, and its safety depends entirely on where the paper goes next.

Think before you print

The first question is whether you need to print at all. Many organisations restrict or prohibit printing certain information at home, especially anything containing personal data. Check your policy before printing client records, HR documents, financial detail, or anything marked confidential. If on-screen review will do the job, prefer it.

While the paper exists

If you do print, treat the pages like the sensitive items they are. Don't leave printouts on the kitchen table, in a bag in the car, or in a home office that doubles as a guest room. Store them out of sight, ideally in a locked drawer, and keep them for the shortest time possible. Remember that household members, visitors, and tradespeople can all innocently encounter paper left in the open.

Disposal: shred, don't bin

Ordinary household rubbish and recycling are not secure disposal. Bins sit on the street, bags split, and recycling is hand sorted. A document with names, addresses, or account details dropped whole into recycling can end up anywhere. Use a cross-cut shredder for any work paper containing personal or confidential information. If you don't have a shredder, keep the documents securely until you can bring them to the office for confidential waste disposal, or ask your organisation what it wants you to do. Tearing a page in half is not shredding.

The same applies to old devices and media

Old laptops, phones, and USB sticks that ever held work data need proper wiping or destruction, not a drawer, a charity shop, or an online marketplace. Return work devices to IT, and ask IT before disposing of any personal device that was used for work. Deleted files are routinely recoverable from devices that have not been properly erased.