Shredding has recently become a whole lot more popular. Why is that? In two words: identity theft. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the U.S. And what is worse for homeowners and small businesses is that, with recent court decisions and legislation, sometimes you can be held at fault along with the thief.

There's now a law in effect that if you employ even one person, even in the home only, such as a nanny or gardener, you can be held liable if they are subject to identity theft. All that's needed is for you to have access to their personal information, such as a Social Security number, and fail to properly protect it.

What counts as proper? Shredding, burning and secure disposal.

You're required to exercise due diligence and shred documents containing important information. Alternatively, you can burn documents. But burning is often illegal outside the home in certain counties, so you have to carry it out in an approved manner. Can you spell Catch-22?

Of course, you always have the option of using a business that specializes in document and information destruction. Whether that's cost-effective depends on the business' specific rates and the amount and frequency of your needs. The rates, naturally, vary with quantity, location and several other factors.

Those businesses come in two basic forms: they come to you or you take it to them. Once again, which is better depends on your circumstances.

Until recently security was much tighter at offsite locations. Most mobile document destruction services have overcome that by clever techniques that vary from company to company. Good ones have bonded employees who have gone through background checks.

Both employers and individuals need to take due caution to keep information secure and that can go beyond destruction of paper documents. In the last 10 to 20 years, as both PCs and the Internet became universal, information storage expanded to floppy disks and hard drives to CDs and DVDs and out to servers that the individual doesn't even control.

Beyond encrypting documents and establishing good password policies, there's little an individual or small business can do to protect computers they don't own. But with the popularity of inexpensive CD and DVD burners, files have moved off the hard drive and onto those newer media. Those also need to be secured and sometimes destroyed. Shredders can do that too.

Protect yourself and those who work for you by shredding and using other forms of information destruction. It's not only the law of the land, it's also the least expensive form of insurance for what can otherwise be a very costly event.