All you need to know about Hard drive destruction

In today’s ever-digitised world, the electronic equipment belonging to businesses has never been more precious. Often storing confidential, important information and data about both their business or their clients, computers and devices in businesses hold a lot of weight in terms of risk and reputation, and therefore, they must be looked after with the utmost level of care.

But what happens when those devices are surplus to requirements and need disposing of? After all, computers have a shelf life. After a few years they stop performing effectively and need to be replaced with a newer, snazzier hard drive. Maybe your computer works, but you’re having an office update and are buying new machines. Either way, businesses must dispose of the old hard drives appropriately to avoid any data leaks, or their confidential information being used fraudulently.

As a society, as we rely more and more on digital devices each day, hackers become smarter and more advanced with their ability to compromise our information for their personal gain. This makes it all the more important for businesses to be compliant when it comes to hard drive destruction.

If they don’t, the permeations can be catastrophic for business. Just think about how much data is stored in our digital devices nowadays – bank account information, passwords, medical records, financial documents – if this information is compromised, it could result in irreparable reputational damage, financial uncertainty and, depending on the severity of the breach, possible job losses.

What’s more here, is the environmental damage that can be caused if businesses decide to negligently dispose of their hard drives in local rubbish stores (bins, skips, tips etc). The majority of the drive including the plastic casing will end up in landfill, taking up to 100 years to decompose and leaching toxic substances into soil and water, negatively impacting the ecosystem.

Luckily, the solution is simple – hard drive destruction.

What is Hard Drive Destruction?

Hard drive destruction is a service that is involves physically shredding the hard drive so that the information on it can’t be recovered. This is done in a specialist shredder which destroys all of the individual platters in a hard drive – the disks that store data – and is carried out and managed on-site by a professional company who are licensed to do so.

Can’t I just delete the files?

A recent study completed by the Blancco Technology Group uncovered that even if you think your information has been deleted, it can be recovered from hard drives. They purchased 200 used drives from various sites online, and found that 36% of those drives contained “residual data” or data that the previous user deleted, but did not properly erase – which means they were easier to recover.

Can I destroy the hard drive myself?

Punching or drilling holes in the hard drive also doesn’t work as some of the data may still be recoverable. The only way to be 100% sure that data is destroyed for good, is to completely shred the drives into small pieces that can’t be fixed or put back together.

Why Use Concept Management?

The pros of using an assured hard drive destruction company like Concept Management deal with your data deletion are unrivalled. Firstly, it ensures you’re complying with GDPR laws. To merely delete a hard drive is not compliant with GDPR and where there is data misuse, this can lead to drastic penalty payments.

Only the professional destruction of the hard drive using a shredder can ensure that the data on the hard drive is destroyed permanently, irretrievably and in accordance with data protection laws.

What does GDPR mean to you?

If your organisation markets to or processes the information of EU citizens, the GDPR applies to you—whether or not you’re based in the EU. And that means you need to understand and start working on a plan to meet the GDPR data protection requirements now.

For the first time, monetary sanctions of up to 4% of global annual turnover will apply to breaches of the regulation. It also includes additional measures to protect the personal data of EU citizens.

Next, using Concept Management will provide you as a business with peace of mind that your data is destroyed, confirmed with a certificate of destruction that is given to you upon completion.

You will be given secure, tamper-proof containers to store your hard drives in before we collect your hard drives in the secure containers and either shred them on-site in a specialist mobile shredding vehicle, or take them to shred at our industrial workshop.

We also provide: 

• Certificate of registration with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
• Proof that it complies with GDPR.
• ISO certification and environmental licenses that show the company is certified to collect, process and destroy or resell confidential materials and do so in an environmentally friendly way.

Here at Concept we can provide waste audits to assess your data security needs followed by the removal, destruction and recycling of the old IT equipment and storage drives. We use several different methods of hard drive destruction such as shredding and on site destruction, and pride ourselves on confidentiality.

We understand the value of data to your business and the serious implications of a data breach. Our team can work with businesses to get you the best possible hard drive destruction service, suited to you and your organisation.

To discuss how we can assist with your hard drive destruction, email us at [email protected] or give us a call on 01204 363184!