Why should you use a hard drive shredding company?

 

Is your company thinking about hard drive shredding? Did you know that 3 out of 5 secondhand hard drives contain the previous owners data, according to a new study commissioned by Comparitech and the University of Hertfordshire? There are plenty of free tools available to help cyber criminals recover deleted files.  Wiping hard drives manually also can leave room for human error. If not done properly, valuable information can be left behind. Take for example a recent case of data falling into the wrong hands in Vienna. 

 

Not only do we shred your hard drives we also recycle each and every hard drive that we receive because we believe in zero-waste. At Cyclone Shredding we know how important it is to keep your information safe and secure. In Ireland, cyber crime is double global levels, with four out of 10 organisations failing to assess the risks.

 

” Information is power “

 

3 reasons why you should destroy old hard drives

1. It’s the only way to 100% destroy all your company information-We can shred on-site or collect your hard-drives and shred them on our premises.

2. It saves you and your staff time – Imagine if your I.T. Manager had to manually try to wipe 50 hard drives? How long would that take and would other key projects get put on the back burner?

3. A one terabyte hard drive can typically hold 100 million double-sided pages in Word Document format and if that gets into the wrong hands, this could be disastrous to your business and cause reputational damage. Ask yourself, do you really want a stranger getting their hands on this information?

 

As part of the study Comparitech purchased 200 used  old hard drives (half from the USA, the other half  from the UK) and examined them to see how many contained recoverable, compromising information.

 

 

Examples of content recovered from old hard drives included:

Employer payment records

Photos of soldiers in the Middle East

Plans and documentation for Army barracks

Visa applications for trips to China and India

A debt collection notice

Passport scans

Driver’s licence scans

Expense returns

Bank statements and utility bills

A copy of a speeding fine

Intimate photos

A spreadsheet with the names and personal details of 113 people

Completed tax documents

Employment applications and CVs

 

Data could easily be recovered from 54% of the US disks, and 63% of those bought in the UK. Don’t take that chance with your sensitive business data. If you want to make the smart choice give us a call on 1800 79 78 77 to talk about our hard drive shredding today  so you have one less thing to worry about.