How to Destroy a Hard Drive
Do you have a pile of old hard drives you no longer use? Think it’s safe to toss them into the trash or donate them to a recycling center? Think again. If the sensitive information on those old hard drives falls into the wrong hands, you are exposing yourself to potential data breach threats and serious loss of revenue. Do you have any idea how to destroy a hard drive? If you answered, “yes, with a hard drive destroyer!”, then you’re in luck. Unless your firm doesn’t own a hard drive destroyer? How do you destroy hard drives and handle hard drive disposal without the appropriate tools and processes in place?
Data security has never been more important for your business. It seems like every day there’s a news story about sensitive customer information being obtained illegally via unauthorized access to a business’ computer data. In 2018, 43 percent of businesses in the United States had some sort of cyber theft. These thefts cost businesses an average of $955,000 per incident, including settlements, legal fees, clean up and putting better security measures in place. While such cases are devastating for any business, they are particularly traumatic to smaller businesses that lack the resources to handle this kind of expense, not to mention a prolonged court case or class action suit. Keeping your electronic data safe from unauthorized eyes just makes good business and moral sense.
What is hard drive destroying?
Hard drive destroying makes it impossible for cybercriminals to retrieve data from computer hard drives that your company is no longer using. We bring our mobile destroying machine directly to your office, warehouse load dock or storage location, so you don’t have to worry about the data on the hard drives being compromised en route to the hard drive destruction site. As the name implies, our machine reduces hard drives into multiple small pieces. We sever the platter on the drive, as this is where data is stored. At the end of the process, we dispose of the pieces in an ecologically-friendly way. The entire process is quick, affordable and easy. You simply make an appointment and gather your equipment to be destroyed. We do the rest.
Why destroying is important to your business
There are many advantages for your business associated with hard drive destroying. Key among these is keeping your customer’s sensitive data and your company data protected from theft. However, this is just one of the many benefits to using hard drive shredding.
1. Destroying gives your customers the security of knowing their sensitive information is being responsibly handled.
Erasure isn’t enough to keep the sensitive customer and company information stored on your hard drives from getting into the hands of criminals. When you erase hard drive information, there are still remnants of that information and savvy cyber-thieves can reconstruct data from these discarded hard drives even after the information has been scrubbed from the drive. Obviously, this is impossible when the hard drive is in many, small pieces.
2. Destroying saves you time and money.
With mobile hard drive destroying, you don’t have to spend your employees’ time erasing and destroying information on your hard drives. We handle everything from destruction to clean up. Not having to use your employee resources for this task also saves you money.
3. Destroying helps prevent industrial theft.
Not all cyber theft is done by those outside of the company, unfortunately. Many cybercrimes originate inside of a business organization. By having a third party handle the hard drive destruction, you eliminate the risk that intact hard drives will leave your company in the purse or backpack of an unscrupulous employee.
4. Destroying helps to free up office space that would otherwise be used for storage.
When you have your old computer hard drives destroyed, you don’t have to keep all of that old computer equipment in a locked storage room to ensure that the information stored on those hard drives won’t be compromised. This allows you to rent a smaller space or use the area you previously used for your old electronic equipment for something more useful or fun, maybe a workout room for your employees or a showroom to display your products to potential customers.
5. Destroying keeps you in compliance with state, local and federal laws about destroying electronic data.
There are an increasing number of federal, state and local regulations about how electronic data needs to be destroyed. These are designed to help curb the increasing number of cybercrimes. Having your hard drives destroyed by using our technology helps keeps you in compliance with all of these laws, and no only keeps you from being fined, but helps your company do your part to curbing this crime epidemic.
We’d like to show you how beneficial and easy hard drive shredding can be. To learn more about our mobile hard drive destruction and how it can ramp up your data security efforts contact us today.
