Almost half of hard-drives sold through eBay contain sensitive data. The Blanco Technology Group & Ontrack recently examined almost 200 hard drives and found that 42% contained sensitive information with 15% containing personally identifiable information. Many of the sellers involved believed that they had followed proper procedures for wiping data. However, the methods they used were flawed. As a result, these substandard practices create the risk of sensitive information falling into the wrong hands. Therefore, organisations of all sizes need to make sure they have proper procedures in place for hardware destruction and wiping data from hardware which will be reused.
As an outsourced IT Department we procure hundreds of pieces of new hardware for business IT Support customers each year. In most cases, our SME customers will want us to process destruction of their old hardware and we have robust hard drive disposal procedures in place.
Our hardware destruction processes have been audited as part of our ISO 27001 Information Security Management System accreditation. They meet the high requirements for information security required by this ISO standard. Additionally, annual audits by an external assessor are a key part of the ISO 27001 process. This offers our IT Support customers confidence in our secure computer disposal services. Indeed, we ensure a full audit trail is in place for each and every hard-drive we process. We support SMEs across many sectors in Scotland,including those where sensitive data is a key element of their service delivery: accountants, lawyers, manufacturers etc. They all need to know their data is being disposed of correctly and their obligations under GDPR are being met.
As the amount of e-waste we are creating soars it is worth noting that businesses also need to comply with the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations. That is, IT equipment must be destroyed correctly and cannot simply be dumped. Again, our IT Support and IT Security customers across Glasgow, & Edinburgh don’t need to worry about this as we take care of it all for them. So, they have peace of mind that their data has been erased and hardware disposed of correctly. Contact us today if you need advice.
RedMosquito Ltd provides IT Support and IT Security Services to SMEs in Glasgow, Edinburgh and throughout central Scotland.