You need to maintain the security of various information controlled by your company, no matter how it’s stored. It can be on paper or other media, on hard, thumb, and solid-state drives. Given how much information can be stored electronically, it would be much easier for identity thieves to exploit a hard drive’s worth of information than a dumpster full of documents.
Titan Mobile Shredding can safely and securely destroy electronic storage devices, cell phones, old floppy disks, CDs, and DVDs. Unsecured, confidential, personally identifiable information (PII) that’s needlessly taking up space in your company is an unintentional disclosure waiting to happen. Call us today at (866) 848-2699 to learn more about how we effectively destroy digital data at a reasonable price.
Valuable Information Can Be Found on Hard Drives You Want to Throw Away
A study published in 2017 by the National Association for Information Destruction® (NAID®) found PII on 40 percent of devices resold in public resale channels. The devices included used hard drives, mobile phones, and tablets.
Because electronics have become much more capable and less expensive, nearly every American adult has some form of technology that stores data. It’s not uncommon for it to include PII and other confidential information. Electronic auction, resale, and recycling sites sell this used hardware, but identity thieves may find much greater value in the data on the devices than the devices themselves.
The data on more than 250 devices was found without sophisticated software or advanced forensic training. Easily downloadable shareware was used for the study. If more expertise and specialized recovery software were used, the 40 percent figure may just be the start. Tablets had the most data (50 percent), followed by hard drives (44 percent) and mobile phones.
Some of the data on publicly available used devices included:
- Credit card information
- Contact information
- Usernames and passwords
- Business and personal data
- Tax details
You Can’t Recover Data From Storage Devices that Are Torn Apart
The best way to dispose of an old hard drive or other electronic storage device is to hire TITAN Mobile Shredding because we destroy it, making it impossible for others to access what was on it. As you can see from this video, when we’re done with it, it’s literally in pieces that can’t be used to recover information.
Deleting files isn’t enough because recovery software may find data you don’t want anyone to see. A file still exists even after you delete it from your trash or recycle bin. There are programs that overwrite storage device contents so you shouldn’t just rely on that. You can’t be certain that nothing on the drive is recoverable.
When we destroy storage devices, you eliminate the risk of data on them being misused. You, therefore, protect your company from potential fines and lawsuits. You should have privacy practices that employees must follow to protect confidential information from when it’s created to its destruction, whether they work from home or at your office.
Your Place or Ours?
Like paper document disposal, shredding of electronic devices can be done at your place of business or at our Doylestown location. After coming to your location, we’ll gather the devices and take down the serial numbers for your records. The devices will be destroyed in one of our shred trucks. You’ll be emailed an electronic Certificate of Destruction and a report with the serial numbers. You can also bring devices to us in Doylestown, or we can pick them up from your business, keep them in a secure container, and go through the same process at our facility.
You Can Trust TITAN Mobile Shredding to Keep Your Data Safe
TITAN serves the shredding needs of organizations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Call us at (866) 848-2699 to discuss your needs. We can customize our services to meet them at a price you can afford.
