How a Non-Certified Data Destruction Company Becomes a Risk for Your Business

Certified data destruction

Non certified data Destruction Company becomes a risk for your business EcogreenITRecycling

Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome has become widespread in the IT industry. Several service providers have emerged and promise to take care of a secured data destruction process and relieve you of the hoarding requirements. For organizations across different domains it would extend to information like past financial statements, personal records of past employees, lease records, contract copies and much more. While it is easy to dispose off with hard copies of these information, obliterating a digital copy can be a complicated issue. If you are teaming up with a non-certified data destruction partner, it may result in leaks that might come to harm your business.

Depending on how old your business is, the number of employees you have and the number of physical sites you are engaged in, there would be thousands of copies of confidential data that could just be lying around. Even when you have deleted information from pen drives and other magnetic discs, there are ample numbers of ways that this data can be retrieved. Well, it could be accounts related information, bank statements, passwords, login information, business plans, tax records, client lists, contact lists, customer records, activity sheets, product plans, legal documents, ID cards, supplier specifications, training information, treatment programs, specification drawings and much more. Each one of these has the potential to give your competitor strong grounds to take the lead. Even if it isn’t a fuel competition, un-destroyed data and information can also cause legal and financial troubles.

Put simply, ineffective hard drive destruction will lead to information falling into the wrong hands. Information unearthed can lead to a lot of explaining to your customers and clients and you don’t want to be in that situation! Having a non-certified service provider increases the chances that the data wasn’t erased at all. In the worst case scenario, it would have been sold to Craigslist or someone interested to pay for it. It might also be the case that you hard drive was just refurbished and brought back to the market with all the information hiding somewhere, ready to be read.

Depending upon the end-of-life data cycle, it is necessary that every organization invests in a proper data sanitization process. You should be working with a properly certified company to mitigate all forms of risks.

So, how to identify a certified data destruction service provider?

Look for certifications like R2, NAID (National Association for Information Destruction) and E-Stewards. These are the general sanitization standards that all responsible data destruction companies confer to. These standards also demand digital information to be handled in a certain manner and transparency to be provided across the process. This even includes downstream vendors, if required.

Further, certified data destruction and computer recycling companies will provide insurance on any damage that may result due to accident or other kinds of human error. While data sanitization and destruction should be “mission critical” for every business, they don’t really have to be expensive. There are several data destruction companies that would do a thorough recycling at every low fee. This would also be your way to do off with all irrelevant information and yet used the storage devices as new ones. With the right partner by your side, you will never face and embarrassing situation.

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Katie Baker

Environment Columnist at Ecogreen IT Recycling
Katie Baker is an Environment Columnist at Ecogreen IT Recycling. She blogs about e-waste, recycling and technology. She is also a community manager for various Environment Forums.