The Aftermath of a Data Breach: Why Secure Hard Drive Disposal Matters
September 12, 2023
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Consider the risk and damage you’ll have to clean up if thieves get their hands on some of your old computers or hard drives.
Apart from your clients losing trust in your company, rectifying the damage caused might cost you thousands if not millions of dollars.
..and will your insurance cover the cost of the damage done, if you haven’t done everything in your power to mitigate the risks of keeping end-of-life devices with sensitive data on them… just lying around.
It would be wise to “deal with” those end-of-life ICT media and assets before they get you into hot water.
To appropriately deal with the items in question and adhere to the legal requirements that govern the handling of this media and these assets they first need to be assessed to understand the classification they should be handled under (are they classified or not, and what type of classified material is on the media and within the assets?).
When removing obsolete and end-of-life hard drives from your company, it’s critical to avoid data breaches at all costs. While removing them yourself may appear more cost-effective, you risk having the sensitive data from within (information) retrieved and misused. Using the services of an organisation that specialises in the correct handling and destruction of electronic data storage media and devices – is the most secure way to ensure that your hard drive destruction is carried out in the correct manner, in order to comply with the requirements of legally handling this type of data, media and assets.
People with the right skills can recover data readily from erased or damaged hard drives or those that have been thrown away. Wiping does not ensure that all of the contents has been deleted.
SHDD has the knowledge, experience and equipment to make sure none of the data on media and within devices is ever able to be recovered or used again. We have a two step process of sanitising and then destroying the physical media or asset so that the IP or data cannot be recovered, read or used ever again; even when using modern forensic technologies – because there is no shred of evidence left!
We physically shred the evidence with our destruction equipment, which are powerful machines that make recovery impossible; effectively doing the job of information security for you.
If businesses do not properly dispose of their sensitive media and data storage assets they risk facing severe penalties. Your organisation might be fined thousands of dollars and also required to pay rectification costs as well as the directors potentially going to jail (depending on the severity of the data leak).
Working in conjunction with the right disposal company like Secure Hard Drive Destruction, who specialist in handling the most highly classified disposals for organisations like the Australian and USA Departments of Defence… is an easy way to avoid issues surrounding information security and avoid fines, court mandated payable costs as well as jail time.
Keeping old documents and files, hard discs, computers, and any other data storage devices in your office can take up a lot of space. Having a regular cycle of professional destruction services for these surplus and end-of-life items will help you save time wondering how to dispose of them in the correct manner and free up office and warehouse space (depending how big the stock pile is!).
The requirements for the proper destruction of storage devices and media with sensitive data enclosed are regularly only understood by individuals and companies with this unique professional specialty. It is their responsibility to follow these standards and ensure the security of your sensitive data.
Understanding and following the requirements of NAID AAA PSPF certified destruction minimises your risks and fines, guaranteeing that your data and the data of your customers is safe as your media and assets are disposed of in the correct manner.
You can ensure everything is gone for good if you destroy it properly, which is critical for several reasons.
First and foremost, you want to safeguard the interests of your customers, employees, vendors, business partners, and those who entrust you with sensitive information. In business you have an ethical responsibility to protect their data, it is after all, the law. Failure to follow privacy regulations and requirements for information security could get you in trouble with the authorities and result in penalties.
The key is that you must adequately remove data or destroy the IP, and there are various ways to do this from discs and drives. Which method should you choose?
Although deleting files is the most common technique of wiping them from a desktop, it does not permanently delete the content from your drives. Reformatting is the same. These approaches make it impossible for the typical individual to find it, but IT professionals and cyber criminals can recover the information if not sanitised in the correct manner. To put it another way, removing and reformatting won’t get the job done.
That’s why we overwrite all the data on the drives and storage devices with ones and zeros… so that the data cannot be understood or used again.
If you’re not a computer expert, you could believe that removing the drive’s physical components would suffice rather than attempting to erase the digital data. You’ve probably seen videos on the internet of individuals drilling into these, hammering them, or soaking them in acid. These methods are not only ineffectual because the content inside may survive, but they are also dangerous because you may injure yourself.
You may have heard that we may use magnets to delete information from a disc, which is partially correct. You’ll require a powerful magnetic device, which means you’ll need to send your drives to a professional degaussing provider.
While degaussing can erase data, it will ruin your discs, turning them into paperweights. Furthermore, because SSDs (solid state drives) employ flash memory rather than magnetic storage, this method will not work on them.
Hence we as professionals have equipment and processes which are approved by the ISM, PSPF and DSPF for the complete and correct destruction of the information on all types of storage devices and documents.
Wiping is a good way of permanently erasing information if you don’t want to destroy the drive entirely. However, it is essential to do this correctly, or some information may remain. To accomplish complete deletion, the company must overwrite information multiple times and overwrite the information as discussed above. Hiring a professional to achieve this is the only way to be sure, especially if you plan to restore and recycle the drives or computers; selling them in the “used” item market.
Shredding is your best bet if you don’t plan to resell the hard drives or computers that they came from and want complete confidence that the contents are unrecoverable. Partnering with a specialist in this field is the smart option for this task because they provide specialised equipment and certified expertise.
Companies like SHDD typically collect and destroy no longer utilised computers, discs and storage devices. They shred the drives in a fit-for-purpose shredder, which shreds them into tiny fragments, rendering the information unrecoverable. There are certain size requirements for particular classifications of data and the devices that hold the data
Services for destroying these include:
The most secure approach to destroy a hard drive is to utilise a hard drive destruction specialist, who provides the end user with a secure method of disposal, while being fully compliant.
SHDD provides an end-to-end secure disposal environment for ‘Highly Classified’ and ‘Security Protected Attractive Assets’ such as ICT media and assets, ITAR, weapons, and explosive ordnance (free of explosives), and systems from ‘End-of-Life’ Defence vehicles (Air, Sea, and Land).
Under the direction and guidance of the Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF), Defence Security Policy Framework (DSPF), and ASD Information Security Manual, we have created Australia’s most secure environment for classified and security-protected attractive asset disposal (ISM).
