NAID Challenges New Jersey Hard Drive Destruction Restriction

Posted in Blog

Glenn Laga

9 April, 2015

Regulation limits options for destroying hard drives containing PPI.

The Phoenix-based National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) says it will challenge a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) regulation that limits the options available to organizations for destroying obsolete hard drives containing personally identifiable information (PII).

New Jersey is the only state in the United States that requires a state-level environmental license to shred hard drives, NAID says. Many stakeholders, including NAID, say they believe the state’s position on this issue is unnecessarily restrictive, with NAID noting that the state requirement interferes with many financial and health care organizations’ policies on the destruction of media containing PII.

According to NAID, the New Jersey DEP says destruction of hard drives in any manner is considered “processing” and hard drives, which are a form of “consumer electronics” are considered “universal waste.” For these reasons, the New Jersey DEP has ruled, “Processing of consumer electronics whether as a permanent or mobile shredding requires a general or limited Class D Recycling Center Approval,” NAID reports on its website.

NAID says it will add its support and resources to an existing initiative that New York-based NAID member company Guardian Data Destruction has started.

“We were happy to fight this battle on our own,” says Glenn Laga, Guardian founder and CEO. “But we’re obviously delighted to get the rest of the industry involved. Advocating for customers and members is a prime example of the association’s value to the industry.”

“The toughest thing about such initiatives is developing an effective strategy,” says NAID President Steve Richards, CSDS, Richards & Richards, Nashville, Tennessee. “When we learned that Guardian had defined such a strategy, the board did not hesitate in adding the association’s support and resources behind it.”

Dag Adamson, president of international IT asset management firm LifeSpan, Newton, Massachusetts, will lead the project for NAID. Adamson and Laga will be joined on the task force by Angie Singer Keating from Reclamere Inc., Tyrone, Pennsylvania; Don Adriaansen, CSDS, from TITAN Mobile Shredding, Pipersville, Pennsylvania; Bob Haskins from Gigabiter Inc., Norristown, Pennsylvania; and Dave Beal from EPC Inc., St. Charles, Missouri.

NAID is a nonprofit trade association of the secure destruction industry and currently representing more than 1,900 member locations globally. NAID’s mission is to promote the proper destruction of discarded information and to encourage the outsourcing of destruction needs to qualified contractors.

SDB Staff. “NAID Challenges New Jersey Hard Drive Destruction Restriction.” Recycling Today RSS News. N.p., 7 Apr. 2015. Web.

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