When any machines that hold data are retired, the existing data must be erased and destroyed forever. Organizations may physically destroy data by any of several methods, such as shredding drives, melting them, or rendering the physical storage media unusable and unreadable. Interestingly, physical destruction is also a cost-effective data destruction method for organizations and businesses of any size. Another form of physical destruction, shredding, can be the most reliable and economical method for destroying electronic data on any media containing hard drives or solid-state drives that are nearing their end.
This blog discusses the importance of data destruction in cyber security solutions and some tips to consider while opting for the process.
What is Data Destruction?
Using a data destruction process, data-bearing devices such as hard drives or mobile devices are physically destroyed using data shredding or degaussing methods. A data destruction company achieves this assurance by physically shredding a hard drive using a high-security media destroyer. The only way to guarantee your data is safely deleted is by taking the hard drives to a data destruction company.
Here are six methods for securely wiping data (4 methods to erase data from hard drives and two for SSDs). The second method, Secure Data Deletion, is considered appropriate for destroying most types of data.
Why is Data Destruction Important?
Data sanitization techniques involve special software that wipes data, special devices that attach to your storage media and wipe data and a process that physically destroys your media so that data cannot be recovered from your storage devices. For companies using this flash media storage approach, overwriting and shredding/destroying is the best method of getting the data adequately sanitized. One of the critical components in the data deletion policy and its related deletion procedures is the technology used for the secure destruction of the data and the storage media.
One advantage of secure data deletion is that storage media may be reused. Once a storage media is destroyed, it is impossible to retrieve data. It is important to remember that, even if the data storage device is defective or has stopped working, a hard disk drive can generally be recovered, and data stored therein extracted.
Only a qualified vendor, such as an IT asset disposal company, should undertake the highly specialised task of data destruction. For environmental and legal reasons, not to mention your peace of mind, your data must be disposed of safely and responsibly. Numerous instances of data being improperly disposed of and recovered in unsafe locations, such as rubbish dumps, have occurred in recent years.
This not only has the potential to be harmful to the environment but also puts the owners of the data-bearing assets at severe risk of a breach. With the upcoming implementation of the GDPR, this is something that few businesses can afford to risk.
Although your data storage devices may be faulty or have stopped working, the hard drive can be recovered while the data stored within can be extracted. Therefore, data destruction is one of the most effective methods of eradicating sensitive data from end-of-life devices.
Ending Note:
Data destruction is a planned process for destroying data stored on hard drives, tapes, and other electronic media such that the data stored on hard drives cannot be re-accessed. Attempting the deletion itself using data deletion software would not have guaranteed data destruction. Many cyber security solutions do not destroy your data; it could still be recovered and compromised. If you secure and destroy data on a server, it is still not entirely done if a staff member walks around with copies of files on their laptops and thumb drives.
