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Tips for Proper Data Destruction in 2020

We live in an information age where the root of information can create an unprecedented amount of digital data. This deluge is not even close to seeing its end.

The International Data Corporation released a report showing that the digital universe is expanding at a rate of 40% every year. A large amount of the created data is generated and stored by companies through decommissioning data centers. IDC further states that companies’ consumers and employees create two-thirds of the data points.

Data can guide a business to optimum production and efficiency. It helps a firm fine-tune its daily operations, offer better services to its customers, and forecast business trends. But data also brings with it a great deal of responsibility. A company must consistently manage its data and destroy it properly to safeguard the privacy of its customers and employees.

Regulatory bodies have also tightened their compliance policies for corporations and decommissioning data centers, while legal fees and fines related to data breach non-compliance vary widely. Companies that are charged with data misuse as per the regulations should, therefore, be prepared to pay much more in courts. It is now, more than ever, critical to destroying data properly. CJD E-Cycling makes this easier than ever and will take care of everything for your organization.

Data Destruction
The act of destroying data is pretty straightforward. It is basically the process by which information is destroyed. Whether it is in digital form or paper, data destruction should be done per the industry-set compliance rules and best practice standards.

To securely destroy digital data, sensitive information is overwritten using random data, which renders the original data unreadable. Failure to securely erase data leads to heightened vulnerability to identity theft. A study carried out in 2015 shows that 48% of smartphones and 2nd-hand hard drives contained residual data with sensitive information, including photos and videos.

For larger organizations, the stakes are much higher. The privacy of at least 340,000 people was compromised when Affinity Health Plan, Inc. leased out computer hardware that was not properly sanitized. The company paid a whopping $1.2M in settlement for oversight with the Health and Human Services Department.

How to destroy data
Your organization must determine where all the data is stored and decide which data they would like to keep when decommissioning data centers. This can be achieved through establishing policies that require documents to be stored in a particular manner, such as on a specific server. Data is not destroyed if there is a copy of the documents in an employee’s flash drive.

When all the data has been stored correctly, and in the required format, you can use any of the following methods if relevant to your scenario while decommissioning data centers:

•Disposal

Disposal is dumping un-sanitized data. It should only include non-confidential information. Disposal is easy, for a physical hard drive, it only involves taking it to an electronics disposal site. Disposal does not involve any e-cycling of data storage equipment.

•Overwriting

Overwriting is one of the most common techniques of decommissioning data centers. It is also a great way to address data remnants (the residual data representations that remain after attempts to erase it). It involves overwriting the drive with new data. The storage media can then be used for other purposes, and hence e-cycling is possible.

According to experts, overwriting is a relatively low cost and easy option since it can be done by software and can be applied to the whole medium or selectively on the part of it.

One of the unique benefits of this technique is that when all data storage locations are addressed, a single pass is usually adequate for data destruction. Overwriting ensures that all data remnants are erased, therefore maintaining data security. It is also an environmentally friendly option, according to experts.

On the other hand, overwriting an entire high-capacity drive may take a long time to complete, especially when decommissioning data centers. The process might also not be able to clean out data from inaccessible folders such as host-protected locations. Furthermore, there is usually no security protection during an erasure process, and it could be vulnerable to intentional parameter changes.

•Degaussing

In the case that your company is destroying all the information from outdated hard disks or other magnetic storage devices, degaussing is an excellent option of decommissioning data centers. It involves magnetically erasing data by eradicating magnetic data fields on the disk media. It is a great option for firms that are decommissioning data centers.

Degaussing permanently renders the hard disks unusable, and hence it is essential to exclude the media with important data. With this method, e-cycling is not possible. It also works for cassettes, reels, diskettes, and cartridge tapes. The process might, however, leave small amounts of residual data in the hard drive and are therefore not always 100% effective. It is advisable to use strong degaussing magnets to ensure certain data is permanently destroyed.

On the flip side, strong degaussing products can be quite expensive. Furthermore, they can have magnetic fields that are strong enough to cause collateral damage to all vulnerable equipment in the surrounding area.

Degaussing is not the right method to use if you are planning on using your drives again. This is because manufacturers cannot fix drives or honor warranties as a result of degaussing incidents.

The effectiveness of degaussing primarily depends on the density of the drive. However, experts say that degaussing capabilities can diminish over time with the technology changes in hard drives and their small sizes. The effectiveness of the method also depends on the people carrying out the procedure. While all three techniques of data destruction are prone to human error, degaussing is particularly sensitive to the length of time and strength of the degaussers.

•Physical Destruction

There are several methods used by organizations in the physical decommissioning of data centers, such as melting, disk shredding, drilling drive cores, or any other physical damage that renders the media unusable.

Physical destruction offers the highest assurance that the data has been utterly destroyed. There is no possibility of someone reconstructing a melted disk.

On the other hand, physical destruction can be costly for firms with a lot of data to dispose of. There are high capital expenses in most physical destruction processes as they use machinery or hot furnaces.

According to experts, the physical destruction of data is not a financially sustainable strategy due to the expenses involved. Furthermore, the approach disregards most organizations’ sustainability programs. Even for companies decommissioning their data centers have to bear huge costs due to the number of devices they have.

A few companies such as Intel have, however, found a way to efficiently destroy their data physically since they found transporting drives for degaussing to be impractical and insecure.

Data Destruction Laws
Technology has dramatically evolved over recent years, and so has information. Governments must, in turn, adjust their regulations to the changing landscape. There are a number of federal and state laws that currently mandate that firms must adequately manage and destroy their data to protect employees and consumers.

•HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountancy Act was introduced as the healthcare industry joined the digital era in both its administrative and clinical settings. The act protects the patient’s confidential records and directs their management.

Some of the destruction protocols in the HIPAA include:

Paper records should be burned, shredded, pulverized, or pulped until any information on them is rendered unobtainable and cannot in any way be reconstructed.

Opaque bags must be used to store a labeled prescription bottle until a disposal contractor properly destroys them.

Digital information must be destroyed using either overwriting software or degaussing techniques.

•The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

The Computer Fraud Abuse Act was enacted in 1984 and has been amended six times now to adapt to data technology. The law basically prohibits anyone from accessing a computer without authorization. It was designed to punish hackers. The punishments can be quite severe, resulting in criminal convictions.

There are a handful of other acts, including the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, that regulate the way data is disposed of or destroyed.

When to destroy data
Some of the reasons that drive organizations to erase their data may dictate when the process of decommissioning data centers should be complete.

Legal compliance
Professionals are required by the law to keep and destroy data in a particular manner. Such rules, depending on the industry and e-cycling, may require some data to be destroyed on specific timelines. Other industries are governed by best practices and other guidelines that protect customer data such as medical, insurance, and Cybersecurity.

Internal Policies
Your organization should have its own set of information retention and destruction protocols. These protocols should be based on already established organization regulations but should cement new policies with no previous guidelines. A data destruction protocol should be part of every organization’s business process and not just an afterthought. For instance, if there are no regulations about portable storage like USB flash drives, your organization risks compromising its employees’ and customers’ data.

Tips for Proper Data Destruction
Information is a double-edged sword; as valuable as it can be to your business by helping understand consumer trends, it can cost you dearly if mismanaged. The punishment could be hefty fines or even lawsuits, but perhaps the worst thing would be reputation damage.

Fortunately, there are easy and clear steps to keep your company data compliant.

•Establish a Data Decimation Policy

There is a need for formalized policies to manage the data destruction process. A firm must first clearly define which information it would like to keep. Not all the information is valued equally by the organization. Therefore it is essential for any firm to clearly identify the documents that should be included in the destruction process. When selecting the data that should be destroyed, a company should involve all the representatives of the company’s departments to ensure all the improvement opportunities and weak points are considered.

While it is advisable to create policies, enforcing them is just as important. You should periodically perform audits of the data destruction process and ensure that all the agreed requirements are being met.

•Digitize Records

Some companies are required by the law to keep hard copies of certain documents for a given period. These companies set e data retention schedules and have techniques for destroying paper documents securely.

However, in most firms, paperwork is unnecessary. It is easy for people to make a photocopy of the paper, and you would never tell until it is too late. No matter how meticulous a filing system is, the manager cannot tell when paperwork is missing or perform a fast audit.

Digitizing data has become a necessity for most firms in recent years. Data destruction software has also evolved to offer automatic data destruction processes. Managers can now easily manage the storage and destruction of sensitive data. The storage of data in the digital cloud also ensures that the e-cycling of storage media is possible.

•Take Advantage of Record Management Software

Record Management Software has been an excellent way for firms to protect e data through its whole lifecycle. By performing independent audits and automating processes, the software alerts the user when documents and e data have expired and need to be destroyed.

Retention of certain documents for longer than the law requires could result in fines. It is, therefore, crucial for companies to not only correctly destroy data but also to do so on time.

•Hire a Records Management Consultant

Regulations for data retention and destruction differ by state and by industry. To ensure that your firm stays compliant with the laws in your state, you should consider hiring the services of a records management consultant. The consultants can help you determine if your firm is storing and destroying data in compliance with the law to protect your company’s reputation.

•The cloud

There is a major concern among firms on how to integrate data destruction with the e-cloud. It is understandable, seeing as all companies are shifting their storage to the cloud. Without the physical storage, there is a lot of concern about data safety. In case you wish to get the services, review the cloud service provider’s policy on data destruction and integrity to ensure their services will comply.

•Train your employees

It is also an excellent idea to sensitize employees on the information and comprehensiveness policy. It is a powerful system to ensure that the employee and client data is not put in the risk of exposure. You can also teach your staff on the importance of following federal regulations as they are only trying to protect the economy from competition-sensitive information.

Whether your firm needs to have paperwork destroyed or e data, a destruction vendor could be a great option to keep your shelves clean. Before hiring a vendor, make sure that they meet all your company’s requirements and are qualified to offer protection to your employees and customers. If you are considering decommissioning data centers, it is also wise to consider hiring a data destruction vendor. For all of your e-cycling, data center decommissioning, and data center deconstructing needs, contact CJD E-Cycling.

January 10, 2020

A Guide to Data Destruction and Decommissioning Data Centers

Data Security

The advent of the information age has brought about numerous advancements that have improved human lives significantly.

New products and technologies are coming out left and right and they have forever changed the way people handle different aspects of their daily lives. Everything from the way people communicate to the manner in which they work has been altered in some form or fashion by technological innovations.

There’s no denying that humanity is better off thanks to its many advancements, but bundled together with the benefits are challenges and problems that must be dealt with properly.

In this article, you will be able to learn more about some of the challenges that have emerged due in large part to the dawning of the information age. To be more specific, you’ll be able to understand more about data and how disposing of it can be an ordeal unto itself because of the electronic components involved.

Data destruction and decommissioning data centers are particular topics that will be discussed.

Later on, some solutions to the problems that stem from reliance on electronics will also be presented.

Let’s get started.

What Is Data Destruction?

Deleting data is something you probably do on a regular basis. When your smartphone is running low on space, you likely go into your gallery and see if there are some pictures you can delete. If there’s still not enough space available, you may check out your file library and see if there are podcasts there that you can erase.

At this point, the deleted files will no longer show up on your phone, but they have not been completely wiped away. Backups of the files in question were likely created previously and by following specific steps and/or using certain types of software, it may still be possible to retrieve the deleted files.

The point here is that deleting a file does not mean that it is completely gone for good.

You will need to do something more drastic such as destroying your data. Unlike with simple deletion, destroying your data means that your files will no longer be accessible or readable. They will essentially be wiped away.

Why Is Data Destruction Necessary?

For those wondering why it may be necessary to carry out a process such as data deletion, the main reason is security.

Some people use their computers to store sensitive financial information or info about their identity. If you’re one of those people, you probably don’t want anyone snooping around your discarded belongings to gain access to those important pieces of information.

Data destruction ensures that all of those bits of personal information will be destroyed along with your computer or even your smartphone.

Companies also make use of data destruction methods often to protect themselves. Corporate espionage is still a concern for many businesses, especially those in highly competitive industries.

By destroying data, companies don’t have to worry about their databases being compromised by some rogue ex-employees.

How Is Data Destruction Carried Out?

There are different methods of data destruction available to individuals and companies and they are:

Overwriting data
Degaussing
Physically destroying data storage units

The first method, overwriting data, works by essentially using up the space previously occupied by old data to hold new bits of information.

White Canyon Software notes that the method is similar to how people could basically create a new VHS tape by recording over the content the tape previously stored back in the day.

Simply overwriting data once should suffice, but in corporate settings, companies may opt to do it more times to ensure that the old data are gone for good.

Degaussing is another method often used for the purposes of destroying data. This method features the use of magnets. The magnets are used to destroy the storage unit housing the targeted data.

Going with this method can effectively ensure that the target data will no longer be readable or accessible, but it also means that the storage unit or hard drive itself will not be used moving forward. If all you want to accomplish is to destroy the data by any means, this method should work for you.

The last way to completely wipe data is to physically destroy the unit housing the bits of information. Various methods can be used to destroy a data storage unit. It’s important to be as thorough as possible to guarantee that the data will no longer be accessible.

Again, there are valid reasons why people or companies may want to destroy their data, but it is important to point out that there are some issues with the methods that are used. Namely, degaussing and physically destroying the storage units can produce electronic waste that will be difficult to dispose of properly on your own.

Why Is Decommissioning Data Centers Important?

Data centers are crucial to the day-to-day operations of many businesses. Bigger companies in particular usually have to work with mountains of data regularly. Understandably, they want to have all that data secured in a protected space and that’s where the data center comes in.

Companies have to create detailed plans regarding their data centers because they must be kept in a controlled and highly secured location. There’s also a constant need on the part of companies to keep their data centers up to date. For all those reasons, companies have to invest heavily in their data centers so that they can continue to be assets that provide useful benefits.

So, why then would companies ever consider decommissioning data centers?

Well, there are actually some good reasons for them to do so, as pointed out by Preferred Power Source.

One reason is that companies can improve their performance by decommissioning their data centers.

There is often a limit placed on how much electronic equipment can be upgraded. As soon as that limit is reached, holding on to and maintaining the pieces of equipment in the data no longer makes sense. They may even actively hold a company’s performance back if they continue to be used.

Running an old data center stocked with outdated equipment and a new one with more modern machinery simultaneously is not a good way of conducting business for any company. For that reason, companies simply opt to cut their losses and shut down the older facility.

Decommissioning data centers also benefit companies from a security standpoint.

When it comes to electronic equipment, items that have become outdated almost immediately become more vulnerable to security breaches. That’s just how things work.

By continuing to rely on those older electronics to house their data, companies are taking a huge risk. Bad actors with more sophisticated tools could enter a company’s database and steal valuable bits of information without ever being detected.

To put it simply, using old equipment in data centers is unwise for companies. Instead of stubbornly continuing to rely on them, the better move is to invest in decommissioning data centers that have become obsolete.

Also, it is absolutely essential for companies to move forward with decommissioning data centers. Refraining from using them any longer is not enough. Those items may still be holding on to data that your company uses. They cannot just be shut down and left alone.

Pieces of data center equipment that are no longer used must be correctly disposed of and the data they’re holding properly destroyed. Otherwise, they can still be points of vulnerability for a company.

Decommissioning data centers also benefit companies because it helps them recoup some of their initial investment. Professionals working on the task of decommissioning will be able to identify equipment that can still be of service to the companies. The companies can then go ahead and continue using them in their upgraded data centers.

It’s often true that decommissioning data centers will not allow companies to get back the majority or even just half of their initial investment, but doing so can still make it possible for them to save some money.

To recap, decommissioning data centers is a good move for companies because:

It improves their performance in the long run
It enhances security
It makes it possible to recoup some of the initial investment

How Is Decommissioning Data Centers Done?

There are several steps involved in the decommissioning process, according to Network World.

Companies can start by hiring professionals to handle the task of decommissioning. After that, the professionals will usually do an inventory of the assets present in the data center and map dependencies.

Conducting inventory is an important step because it enables companies to identify any assets that may still be of use to them. It also lets them know which specific pieces of equipment need to be replaced once the new data center is up and running.

Mapping the dependencies in the older data center can also turn out to be useful as it gives companies a better idea of how to improve upon their previous facility

The process of decommissioning also typically involves removing the contents of the data center and destroying data that companies no longer need. That’s not all however.

Properly recycling the pieces of electronic equipment is also a must and that is easier said than done.

The Importance of E-cycling

Whether a company asks for data to be destroyed or for a data center to be decommissioned, there will likely be electronic waste produced at some point. Just as people are urged to recycle the waste they produce at home, companies and individuals alike are also encouraged to take part in the process of e-cycling when handling their older electronics.

Recycling and e-cycling are basically the same thing, except the latter is focused more on electronic items.

The need for people to recycle their electronic goods has never been more important. Many people may not be aware of this, but the rate at which electronic waste is being generated is already staggering.

Per this article from The Balance Small Business, around 41.8 million tons of electronic waste was produced worldwide in 2014. That’s a big problem for a few reasons.

First off, generating that much waste means that resources are not being utilized properly. By simply failing to recycle cell phones, estimates suggest that Americans get rid of around $60 million worth of silver and gold annually.

Recycling older laptops can also help significantly cut down on energy consumption. Specifically, recycling even just one million laptops could conserve enough energy that can then be used to power up more than 3600 homes in the United States alone.

Failing to recycle electronics in the right way is also having a real impact on the environment. Apart from contributing to the increased amount of hazardous materials in landfills, not recycling electronic goods also leads to increased consumption of natural resources that could have been used in other ways.

Soon enough, health problems may also emerge from the excessive amount of electronic waste being produced.

The amount of electronic waste present in the world can no longer be ignored. The issue of electronic waste must be addressed as soon as possible. You can do your part by making e-cycling a part of your waste disposal routine.

Why E-cycling Is Best Left to the Professionals

Similar to data destruction and decommissioning, e-cycling is something that you will be better off leaving up to the professionals.

They can quickly identify the electronic components that may still be of use to your or your company, thus saving plenty of time and money. Companies that specialize in handling electronic waste may also be able to offer supplemental services such as data destruction that you may end up needing.

On top of all that, entrusting your electronic waste recycling needs to the professionals is also a good move because it saves you from the task of navigating specific laws. According to How Stuff Works, laws governing the disposal of electronic waste can vary from one state to another.

You could get in trouble for breaking the law even if you unwittingly did so. It’s better to err on the side of caution and simply call on the professionals to take care of e-cycling for you or your company. The fees that come from doing so are small prices to pay in exchange for knowing that your electronic waste is being handled responsibly and correctly.

Conclusion

Data destruction, decommissioning data centers, and e-cycling can all be complex tasks, but they are necessary for your security, the health of your finances, and the wellbeing of the planet. It’s understandable if you are hesitant to invest in those practices at first, but they can be immensely beneficial in the long run. Contact CJD with any questions you may have or to learn more about our services.

October 2, 2019