Before the Trucks Show Up: Protecting Records and Data During a Commercial Move

Most of the planning for a commercial move goes into the obvious stuff: the lease, the new floor plan, who sits where.

What gets less attention is the information sitting inside the office. Customer files, payroll records, old hard drives tucked in a supply closet since 2019. A move shakes all of that loose, and for a few days it’s sitting in boxes, hallways and trucks where it normally never would be.

 

Take Stock Before Anything Gets Taped Shut

The easiest time to figure out where sensitive data lives is before a single box is packed. Once things are taped up and labeled, sensitive files get a lot harder to find and separate.

The FTC’s plain-language data security guide for businesses suggests starting with an inventory of every place sensitive information might be stored, and it goes wider than most owners expect. Laptops, flash drives, employees’ home computers, even digital copiers. File cabinets are only part of it.

So walk the office. Open the drawers nobody opens. Check the closet with the old monitors, and ask whoever handles payroll and HR where their records physically sit.

 

Old Laptops, Drives and the Copier in the Corner

Moves are when a lot of equipment gets retired. The five-year-old desktops don’t make the cut. A server gets replaced, and the backup drives from the old system aren’t coming back.

Deleting files isn’t the same as removing them. The FTC guide notes that files deleted with normal keyboard or mouse commands can often still be retrieved, and it recommends wipe utilities that overwrite the entire drive. For businesses that want a more formal standard, NIST publishes federal guidelines for media sanitization, including its current SP 800-88 Rev. 2 guidance, which covers sanitization and disposal techniques matched to how sensitive the information is.

The copier is the one people forget. According to the FTC, the hard drive in a digital copier stores data about the documents it copies, prints, scans, faxes or emails. If the machine is leased, call the leasing company before it goes back and ask whether the drive can be removed and destroyed, or overwritten.

 

Who Handles What on Moving Day

Movers carry boxes. They generally aren’t the ones deciding what goes in them, and that’s where a lot of businesses get a little loose with things.

Full-service movers can take on more than the lifting. Corporate packages may include planning, packing and unpacking; Wolley Movers, a Chicago commercial moving company, lists all three plus insurance on its corporate relocation page. That kind of setup can take a lot off an office manager’s plate. The data question still sits with you, though, because a moving crew won’t necessarily know which drawer holds employee Social Security numbers.

A few simple habits help. Keep sensitive boxes in a separate, locked group, and don’t label them “HR FILES” in big marker on the side. Assign one employee to track those boxes from the old office to the new one.

If records are heading somewhere else in between, like an offsite storage unit, the FTC suggests keeping an inventory of what’s shipped and using a service that lets you track delivery.

 

Paper Files: Shred, Box or Keep

Paper is its own headache. A move is a decent excuse to go through the storage room, but don’t toss records just because they’re old. Tax, payroll and employment records can come with retention requirements that vary, so check with your accountant or attorney before anything goes out.

For what you don’t need, the FTC recommends shredding, burning or pulverizing paper records before discarding them. A regular dumpster or recycling bin isn’t the right place for them.

Some businesses bring in a shredding service for a day before the move. Others buy another shredder and block off an afternoon. Either way, confirm the records are fully destroyed, and if you hire a service, ask how it handles and destroys documents.

 

A Quick Pre-Move Checklist

Nothing fancy here. Just the things that tend to slip through:

• Inventory every device that stores data, copiers and old phones included
• Wipe or destroy drives on equipment you’re retiring, and keep a record of it
• Ask the copier leasing company about the hard drive before the return
• Shred paper you no longer need, after checking retention rules
• Pack sensitive records separately, with plain labels and one person in charge
• Change door codes, alarm codes and Wi-Fi passwords at the old location on move-out day, and collect every key

 

Once You’re in the New Office

Unpacking tends to happen fast and a little chaotically. Boxes get opened wherever there’s floor.

So before anyone starts pulling things out, do a quick count of the sensitive boxes. Make sure the locked cabinets are locking. Confirm the copier drive was handled under the sanitization or disposal process you agreed on with the leasing company, and check that nobody quietly kept a box of old drives “just in case.”

Once those boxes are accounted for and put away, the rest of the unpacking can move at whatever pace the office needs.