SHRED FIRST MAKES INC. 500
Spartanburg, S.C.-based Shred First LLC has again placed on Inc. magazine’s list of America’s fastest growing small and medium-sized businesses.
Shred First, which ranked 373 on Inc.’s list, reported a 363 percent sales figure throughout the past four years. The company also made the list in 2003 at No. 93.
To be eligible for the 2005 edition of the Inc. 500, companies had to be independent and privately held through their 2004 fiscal year and have had at least $600,000 in sales in the base year of 2001. Inc. verifies all information using tax forms and financial statements from certified public accountants and by conducting interviews with company officials.
Shred First was founded by long-time friends John Bauknight IV and Nick Wildrick in the late 1990s. The company was profiled in the debut edition of Secure Destruction Business magazine in the spring of 2004. (The feature titled "Southern Success" can also be found online.)
Bauknight has served as president of the National Association for Information Destruction, and the duo also started a "shredding school" to teach other operators about managing and growing a secure destruction business.
"The entrepreneurs you’ll find on the Inc. 500 have the type of attitude we need to get this economy moving again," says Inc. Editor-in-Chief John Koten. "For them, a tough market is not an excuse for poor performance, but an opportunity to innovate and rise above the competition."
The Inc. 500 has identified several noteworthy companies, with Microsoft, E*Trade, Morningstar, Intuit and Oracle appearing on the list before becoming industry powerhouses.
SECURE ECO SHRED, CHICAGO CELEBRATE
Secure Eco Shred’s Chicago office supplied confetti for the Oct. 28 ticker-tape parade in honor of the Chicago White Sox’ victory over the Houston Astros in the 2005 World Series.
"Christopher Suave, program director for Chicago’s Bureau of Recycling, called our Chicago office the morning before the parade after contacting many other vendors without luck," Secure Eco Shred President Steve Kalapos says.
Suave said he remembered the company from an earlier community shred day, according to Kalapos. While the Chicago Sun Times offered to donate overruns of its newspapers for the parade, Suave told Kalapos that he could not find a vendor to perform the shredding on short notice.
"We quickly adjusted our schedule to commit to spending hours shredding newspapers for the parade," Kalapos says. "We feel strongly about giving back to the community—what better way than helping the White Sox celebrate their championship?"
The Chicago Sun Times donated nearly 20,000 pounds of newspapers, and Secure Eco Shred’s mobile shredding truck processed roughly 3,000 pounds of the newspapers per hour.
Following the parade, city workers collected the confetti and brought it to the city’s recycling center for processing.
Secure Eco Shred has offices in Farmington and Grand Rapids, Mich., Chicago and Brookfield, Conn.
Phishing For information
Ann Arbor-based Greenview Data Inc., the provider of SpamStopsHere e-mail security, has warned against a "spear phishing" attack targeting eBay sellers.
Spear phishing is used to gain access to personal and corporate accounts and to steal sensitive data. Unlike traditional phishing attacks in which millions of e-mails are sent indiscriminately, spear phishing attacks are targeted and focus on one end user or organization at a time. Spear phishing e-mails look as if they are sent from a trusted entity and typically ask for login information.
Criminals are targeting eBay sellers by sending forged auction inquiries from what appears to be eBay’s "Question from eBay Member" message portal. Account holders are prompted to respond to the inquiry by clicking the "Respond Now" link in the e-mail and are then directed to a fraudulent eBay login screen. After the seller has entered his or her login information, the criminals "hijack" the account and steal the seller’s identity.
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