NAID 2018 Session: “What Information is Really on Old Devices & Why it Matters”

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Glenn Laga

Glenn Laga, President of Guardian Data Destruction, introduced John Shegerian, Executive Chairman of ECS — one of the largest IT recyclers in the world, as the speaker for “What Information is Really on Old Devices & Why it Matters” session at NAID 2018. John reviewed the private and potentially dangerous content that can be easily accessed on discarded – even “wiped” – hardware.  The post-session Q&A included enterprise and solid state drive (SSD) data destruction and technology questions from the audience:

Q1. How can you guarantee that all the data is destroyed when a data center is destroyed or wiped, i.e., how do you know that the data is not residing anywhere else?

A1: When you are shredding, degaussing or wiping a hard drive or an enterprise data center, you are destroying a physical device with data on it. If the data is residing at a data center with redundancy, chances are very likely that the same data will be residing in 2-3 additional data centers that are mirrors of the data center you are working on destroying. Understanding the backups and mirrors of your data centers is the only way to completely destroy the data.

Q2. How do you shred solid state drives?

A2: Solid state drives (SSD) require a 2 mm (finer) shred because chips hold the memory instead of a magnetic platter. The chips are very small – ½” to 1” — so the finer shred is required to ensure absolute data destruction.

Q3: What type of shredder would you use on a solid state drive (SSD)?

A3: Currently, there are only two manufacturers/mobile service providers of solid state drive shredding (2 mm). Ask Guardian Data Destruction for more information.

About John Shegerian, Executive Chairman, ERI