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In your grandparents’ day, electronics lasted for decades. They were also pretty simple and clunky. The television had tubes a maintenance specialist could replace. It also had a big dial to change between the very few stations on offer. The telephone was almost indestructible with its sturdy rotary dial, but all it did was make and take actual phone calls. And it was plugged into the wall. The idea of having a computer in front of you in a desk or something that you could carry on to any place was just an impossible dream. It’s a different world now, and we are bombarded with electronic devices that are rapidly eclipsed by newer models with ever more surprising and hard-to-resist features. And if your business depends on keeping up, you can quickly accumulate old laptops. Then you have to find a responsible way to dispose of them that meets GDPR data protection standards and is also environmentally friendly. 

According to a recent Irish Times Article Fraudsters have stolen almost €4.5m from Irish businesses through invoice scams in 2019   

Many cyber-criminals harvest important business email addresses from old company laptops. Your old laptops may take up much space stacked in the back of a supply cupboard, but those old laptops can leave your company vulnerable if they get into the wrong hands.  Tempting as it is, you can’t merely delete files and offer old laptops to employees or charities. Even after you delete information, it is still there on your computer. That’s why professional data shredding services are the best way to be confident that your company is meeting its GDPR data protection obligations.

Step By Step Laptop Disposal

The two key considerations when you are getting rid of an old laptop are GDPR data protection and environmental protection. Here’s how to responsibly dispose of an old laptop, step by step.

1.       Make a backup. The safest ways to do this are to back up the data to an external hard drive or to cloud storage.
2.       Hire data shredding services to destroy the hard drive completely. You’ll find many DIY options online, but they do not completely destroy the data and GDPR data protection means companies are legally obliged to destroy sensitive data completely.
3.       Donate your old laptop, minus the hard drive, to a charity or school or recycle it at your local electronics recycling facility.

It really is that simple to dispose of your old laptops responsibly? The important thing is not to be tempted by the DIY hard drive destruction methods online. Dipping your hard drive in water, bleach or anything else is not going to eradicate the data. Neither is drilling holes in it or smashing it with a hammer. The only fool-proof way to meet your GDPR data protection obligations is to hire a responsible, professional data shredding services company that can provide you with a Certificate of Destruction.

Cyclone Shredding offers onsite, supervised and certified computer hard drive shredding. Contact us today to get a quote.