Now that your business has a paper shredding program in place to destroy confidential documents and private information, you’re wondering what you should be doing about the private information that still sits on your old computer hard drive.
There are three popular ways to destroy information on hard drives that we’ll tell you about in this post.
• Software erasure
There are a number of software programs available that claim to follow Federal Compliance regulations. There are those programs that are free and some that are available for a cost.A downfall to using such programs however is that it can take a significant amount of time to use this method. Erasing a 40 GB hard drive alone could take up to three hours of your company’s valuable time.
• Degaussing
Degaussing is the process of sticking a very strong magnet next to the hard drive so it no longer holds any data. It eliminates all the time it takes to erase the drive but a tool to perform the degaussing is cost prohibitive for the average office.
• Physical Hard Drive Destruction
According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, “Destruction of media is the ultimate form of sanitization.” The only way to absolutely and forever ensure data is no longer available is to have it shredded. Software erasure and degaussing won’t completely guarantee you have destroyed the data as well as drilling or smashing. While using the drill-and-smash method will make the hard drive inoperable, the data could still be accessed by someone with the right forensic skills to delve into your private information.
When you are looking for a solution to destroying your hard drives, having a professional company such as SAFESHRED securely destroy your hardware would be the best option. Hard Drive destruction guarantees that your private information will never fall into the wrong hands.
Call SAFESHRED today at 1-800-987-4733 or visit us at our website at https://www.safeshred.com/
