Hard Drive Destruction: Erasing the Drive is Not Enough

Technology moves at breakneck speeds these days and keeping up with the latest technology at times can definitely seem overwhelming. As a business you keep an enormous amount of sensitive information on your computers whether you realize it or not. The information can be on your desktop computer, a laptop, external hard drives, USB keys, CD’s, DVD’s, and more; all of which are prime targets for thieves and even competitors looking to gain the competitive edge. Simply tossing your electronic information into the trash is risky business.

 

The joy of a new computer can bring great excitement, and while you take all the necessary steps to ‘clean’ the old computer’s hard drive, it still may not be enough. Experienced hackers are able to recover data from a hard drive that has been erased and that can bring some major headaches to you and your company if they are able to use that confidential information. It could be old credit card numbers, or simply a person’s name and all their contact information; all of it is gold to identity thieves. The damage to the reputation of your business can be devastating if it is determined that an information leak has originated with your business.

 

So now that we’ve established that information stored on electronic media is risky, it’s also a business necessity in today’s fast paced electronic driven world. So how do you protect yourself and your business?

 

It’s simple, if you are going to be disposing of any electronic media with information on it about your business or customers don’t waste your time trying to wipe the drive clean, destroy it. A drive that has been destroyed cannot be repaired and removing information from pieces of a destroyed drive is the closest thing to impossible as you can get. A thief would be more likely to move on to their next target rather than waste an obscene amount of time trying to retrieve data from a destroyed hard drive.

 

How does the destruction process work? Well there’s always the old-fashioned do-it-yourself way but not recommended as you can end up with quite a mess afterwards and lots of flying debris as you try and smash the drive to smithereens. Shredding companies that offer hard drive destruction either use a puncture or crush method to destroy hard drives in a safe fashion but still eliminate the possibility of information retrieval.

 

The puncture method usually involves the drive being pierced with a large piece of metal through the middle of the drive and then it being folded in the process. Or companies crush and shred the drives so that the entire casing and inner portion of the drive are rendered useless. In the end these methods, are considered best practice for protecting your business from information leaks and thefts from old hard drives and other electronic media.

 

If you would like further information about hard drive destruction, speak with one of our specialists today. Records Management Solutions is fully equipped to handle the shredding of all your hard drives and electronic media storage devices.

Posted by Records Management Solutions | May 2, 2012 | Articles, News. | (0) Comments.