Best Practices for Media Destruction

Posted in Blog

Glenn Laga

As IT/Data Storage devices grow old and reach their end of life, there are certain steps that must be taken before they can be discarded and/or replaced. If you are inquiring about on-site data destruction and decommissioning, chances are that you have to abide by strict regulations governing data destruction and decommissioning. Failure to properly abide by these regulations can lead to serious backlash and may leave you and your company subject to penalties, fines and even lawsuits.

Here at Guardian Data Destruction, we hear horror stories all the time about companies that (un)knowingly fail to properly destroy storage devices, and are faced with major fines and legal issues. Unfortunately, ignorance is all too common when it comes to discarding and replacing end of life data storage devices. Even reformatting drives is not enough, and if you choose to move forward without hiring trained professionals, you are playing a dangerous game. At Guardian we offer three types of erasure services that our customers may choose from, depending on their wants and needs.

Erasure: Erasure or degaussing of a drive, the way we do it, means that the data is truly and irrevocably erased, but without damaging the store drive itself. All erasure services happen on-site by trained technicians who use specialized erasure equipment capable of erasing large quantities of drives at once. Customers looking to reuse or repurpose their data storage devices most commonly use these services.  Once we’re done, drives can be safely resold or resused.

Shredding: Our shredding process is the most secure and cost effective hard drive destruction solution. We bring a mobile shredder to the client’s site where the hard drives are scanned / inventoried, then placed in a tamper-proof bin and escorted into our Mobile IT Lab. In the lab the hard drives are shredded into ½ inch pieces, resulting in complete, permanent destruction of the data storage devices.

Pinning: The pinning destruction process is usually used when the customer’s security policy will not allow the hard drives to leave their office environment. In this case, we provide the pinning mutilation process right in their office. After the hard drives have been pinned, they are loaded into a tamper-proof box and shredded off-site.

Regardless of your data destruction needs, Guardian is a name that you can trust. We were the first company to provide a mobile, on-site solution for data erasure and destruction.  Our mobile IT lab can erase hundreds of hard drives, or shred up to 3000 hard drives, in a single day! As with any situation where sensitive information is being handled, it is important that properly trained professionals are working to make sure there are no leaks or mishaps, and that all serial numbers are tracked and logged, with full audit history.   We always provide complete reports of all activities so that our client has full documentation of erasure, to pre-empt any legal liabilities in the future.