The internet is full of advice about hard drive destruction methods. Some of them are downright comical, but data protection is no laughing matter. If your company needs to securely destroy data, you need solid confirmation that you are doing it in a way that complies with the EU General Data Protection Regulation. But that isn’t your only concern. Today, more and more companies are striving to be environmentally responsible too.
Hard drive destruction methods need to respect both the privacy of the data and the health of the planet. When you shred paper, you know it can be recycled. But what about a hard drive? What is the most environmentally sensitive way to deal with that?
It’s a complex question because hard drives are not all made of the same materials and they are made of a combination of substances. The data is stored in magnetic medium, a film-thin layer of metal. This magnetic medium is paired with a non-magnetic plate. The plate can be made of a blend of glass and ceramic or of an aluminium alloy. The plates are inside of an air-tight container called a head disk assembly. Recycling hard drives is a complex procedure. Thankfully, all a business owner has to do is chose the right hard drive shredding company.
Responsible Hard Drive Destruction Methods
The most responsible way to destroy a hard drive and put the data on it beyond reach is to shred it. Older hard drive destruction methods such as erasing, reformatting, degaussing and wiping cannot be guaranteed. With the GDPR in force, those are no longer acceptable hard drive destruction methods. Physically shredding the actual hard drive is the solution.
For maximum data security, hard drives can be shredded on site in a mobile unit. Staff should be in uniforms, and of course carefully screened and trained, as the staff at Cyclone Shredding are. The person responsible for ensuring GDPR compliance can observe the hard drive shredding directly via CCTV.
Responsible hard drive shredding companies will issue a Certificate of Destruction to their clients. That means that clients have a fully traceable and transparent process that documents their GDPR compliance. And it helps to know that all materials are recycled, so nothing is added to landfills. Hard drive shredding and recycling ensures that both your data and our planet are protected, giving you complete peace of mind.
