In the summer of 2025, data thieves focused their energy on breaching some of the nation’s leading insurance companies.
Within a few weeks of one another, Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, Erie Insurance, and Aflac all suffered either a data breach or cybersecurity incident.
In the cases of Allianz Life and Aflac, sensitive customer data was exposed. In the case of Erie, no data was exposed but digital operations, including its customer payment portal, were hamstrung while its cybersecurity team investigated the incident. Although insurance companies have always been a tempting target for hackers, last summer’s events put the entire industry on notice.
Data breaches are most often associated with tactics like phishing emails, malware, and social engineering. But it’s not the entire story. Physical breaches involving sensitive paper documents, hard drives, and old electronics can make insurance companies “soft targets” for malicious actors. Properly shredding paper and hard drives, then, becomes a non-negotiable.
Steel City Shredding is Pittsburgh’s most secure document shredding solution, providing insurance companies and independent insurance agents with convenient, controlled, and compliant paper and e-waste disposal.
Our NAID AAA certification verifies our compliance with all known data protection laws, like HIPAA, FACTA, GLBA, GDPR, and PCI DSS. Plus, we can securely shred hard drives, computers, and other data-storing electronics.
Steel City Shredding not only shreds paper and hard drives but it also can help digitize your files with our scanning service.
Our team takes care of prepping the files, scanning the documents, and indexing them. We’ll provide you with an encrypted hard drive that you own so you can upload the digitized files to your server or document management system.
The Illusion of Data Breach Invulnerability
You might think your insurance company is too big to fail.
You tell yourself, “We have redundancies in place. We’re fine.” But if you don’t have a paper and hard drive shredding service in place, you’re just as vulnerable. Or, if you’re contracted with a shredding company that’s not NAID AAA certified, you cannot be sure of its level of expertise or proficiency in understanding the various data protection laws.
As mentioned before, Steel City Shredding is NAID AAA Certified, the data protection industry’s preeminent credentialing process. We’ve undergone the audits, developed an accredited vetting process for team members, and maintain up-to-date qualifications on the dozens of data protection laws that govern the U.S. and international community.
On the other end of the spectrum, you may be an independent insurance agent who believes that your business is too small to be a target. Or, if you’re in the medical insurance industry, you might tell yourself that you’re too little to get dinged for HIPAA violations. Small doesn’t mean safe, because data thieves seek targets of opportunity. An insurance company that doesn’t have robust security protocols makes it easier to breach than a larger insurance company with more resources devoted to data protection.
Sometimes, insurance companies that maintain a paper shredding service fail to set up an accompanying shredding service for hard drives and e-waste. Steel City Shredding offers mobile, on-site shredding of sensitive documents and hard drives with our mobile shredding truck.
Data Breaches Are Elementary
Our digital world has created complacency when it comes to protecting sensitive paper documents. At Northern Guilford Elementary in North Carolina, a group of fifth graders showed how easy it is for someone to reassemble paper documents that have been shredded using a strip-cut shredder.
A strip-cut shredder is a type of shredder most often used for personal document disposal and can be easily purchased through retail stores, office supply chains, or online. It shreds paper into long, thin strips.
The teacher divided her class into groups and gave each of them the shreddings from 4 separate documents to piece back together. Among the documents were tax forms and credit card statements. In only fifteen minutes, without any references of the original document to work from, the students had put together enough pieces to reconstruct sensitive information like account numbers and personally identifiable information (PII). If it’s that easy for fifth graders, imagine how simple it is for data thieves with the motivation and know-how.
That’s why choosing a NAID AAA certified shredding service like Steel City Shredding is a no-brainer for insurance companies. Our industrial shredders destroy sensitive paper documents into tiny, unrecognizable pieces rather than the long strips produced by a strip-cut shredder.
After your paper is shredded, it’s blended with the shreddings from other clients and baled together. It’s like mixing different Lego sets together, serving as an added security measure that prevents any possibility of reassembly. Once the baling process is complete, 100% of the shredded paper is sustainably recycled.
What Data Thieves Can Pull from Sensitive Documents
With a sheaf of stolen documents or the data from a discarded hard drive, malicious actors can pilfer enough sensitive information to steal identities, ruin lives, and rob peace of mind. They can recover confidential data such as:
- Personal Information: full name, birth date, social security number, home address, email address, phone number
- Policyholder records: claims documents, account numbers, legal contractors
- Financial Records: balance sheets, income statements, legal contracts, tax filings
- Protected Health Information (PHI): Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) information, prescriptions, clinical data
- Driver’s license number, passport information, military credentials
Data thieves don’t need everything. A few details here and there can be enough to impersonate a victim and wreak havoc.
How Data Thieves Use Stolen Data
Most data theft boils down to obtaining money or extracting sensitive information to impersonate the victim. Here are a few common crimes data thieves commit.
- Open or access bank accounts
- Apply for loans, new credit cards, or government benefits
- Initiate fraudulent purchases
- Commit tax fraud
- Receive medical care or prescriptions
- Leverage sensitive data for blackmail or extortion events
- Use stolen identities to mask illegal activity or operate scams
- Sell sensitive information to data brokers or put it up for sale on the dark web
Industrial espionage still plays a major role as well. Operational strategy, intellectual property, proprietary technology, and trade secrets can be swiped from insurance companies.
Another important element to remember is that malicious actors don’t always breach organizations directly. They can discover a vulnerability in a third-party vendor or supplier, penetrate them, and use that access to attack the real target.
It’s a good reminder for insurance companies to work with vendors who also use NAID AAA certified shredding services like Steel City Shredding. Your in-house security may be airtight, but your data passes through many hands. Even with close affiliates, if documents containing sensitive data associated with your insurance company aren’t properly disposed of, the exposure risk increases tenfold.
Transparency in the Paper Shredding Process
On top of the confidence that comes with a professional shredding service that is NAID AAA certified, Steel City Shredding also incorporates transparency into every aspect of its operations.
If you choose to get mobile, on-site paper shredding services, you can watch the shredding process firsthand. All Steel City Shredding mobile shredding trucks are equipped with a closed circuit camera system. From a viewing monitor on the side of the truck, you’ll watch the paper (or hard drives and e-waste) go through the shredder.
Following the paper shredding process, you’ll receive an official certificate of destruction.This gives your team an audit trail so that you can satisfy regulatory compliance requirements and give internal decision-makers confirmation that the chain-of-custody for sensitive documents and electronics is being managed appropriately.
Our commitment to transparency extends to our pricing structure. Whether you need a one-time purge or a scheduled shredding service, all quotes from Steel City Shredding are upfront, with no hidden fees.
Paper Shredding for Health Insurance Providers
Identity thieves consider a child’s personally identifiable information (PII) a goldmine, because they can steal their identity with relative ease compared to an adult’s. Most parents are not continually monitoring their child’s personal information, allowing them to open bank accounts, apply for credit cards, or sell their personally identifiable information on the dark web. When finally detected, the identity theft can take significant time to unravel, negatively impacting the parents’ and child’s financial future.
Medical insurance providers handle billions of data points for children and parents. For that reason, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets standards for proper disposal of paper documents and e-waste containing protected health information (PHI) like names, social security numbers, medical histories, and more.
By partnering with Steel City Shredding, your health insurance company can fulfill its HIPAA requirements for proper disposal of sensitive documents and e-waste.
Paper Shredding for Home, Auto & Life Insurance Providers
Professional paper shredding plays a critical role in protecting policyholders, insurers, and the integrity of the insurance industry. When sensitive documents are kept beyond their retention periods, it elevates risk of unauthorized access.
Auto insurance records are a prime target for criminals. Discarded documents containing names, addresses, VINs, or policy numbers can be used to fraudulently transfer vehicle titles, file false insurance claims, or apply for auto loans.
Criminals can also clone vehicles using stolen VINs to disguise stolen cars, register or insure stolen vehicles under legitimate policyholders’ identities, or impersonate the insurance company itself to get additional information from victims. In many cases, this data is bundled and sold on the dark web, amplifying the damage.
Home insurance information is equally valuable. Paper files that reveal property details or ownership data can be used to identify high‑value houses for burglary, transfer home titles, apply for loans such as home equity lines of credit, or impersonate homeowners in financial transactions. Even a single improperly discarded document can expose a homeowner to significant financial and personal risk.
Just look at the many celebrities, athletes, and entertainers who pop up in the news for having their homes robbed. For example, NFL players like Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Joe Burrow have had their homes robbed while playing games. If your insurance agency serves high-net-worth individuals (even if they’re not national names), those clients are prime targets.
Life insurance policies often contain some of the most sensitive information an insurer holds. If accessed by the wrong hands, these documents can be used to change beneficiary information, surrender a policy, or borrow against a policy’s cash value, often without the policyholder realizing it until it’s too late.
What’s intended to secure the future of a family becomes the equivalent of a looted vault. Plus, the death of a loved one brings on an extraordinary amount of grief, and the prospect of dealing with identity theft is the last thing someone wants to face in the aftermath.
Don’t Shred Your Insurance Company’s Reputation
More than just a financial safety net, insurance ensures peace of mind for customers in the midst of big life events, medical treatment, catastrophes, and accidents. That should encourage insurance companies and independent insurance agents to treat their obligation to protect client data as sacred.
As much as insurance seems to be about cold, hard facts and numbers, there’s an emotional aspect. If clients can’t trust their insurance company to take the right precautions, whom can they trust?
Paper shredding and e-waste disposal may not be on top of your insurance company’s priority list, yet it’s the one shortcut you don’t want to take. When breaches happen because of improper document disposal, everyone starts asking questions: your clients, your team, regulatory officials. You come under the microscope, and the time and resources spent addressing a breach can place a serious strain on your insurance agency.
Start Your Scheduled Paper Shredding Service
If you’re an insurance provider or insurance agent in Pennsylvania, northeastern Ohio, or the West Virginia panhandle, paper shredding and e-waste disposal are essential to your data protection efforts.
Because when you take care of the routine things, it makes it that much more difficult for malicious actors to steal sensitive documents, hard drives, or decommissioned digital devices.
To discuss our NAID AAA certified shredding solutions, call 412-496-1240 or contact us for a quote.