Every piece of technology has a lifespan, and even smaller companies likely have a technology closet with at least a few “retired” hard drives tucked into a corner.

Although these machines may have been wiped using software designed to destroy data digitally, the best way to be sure a hard drive won’t fall into the wrong hands is through destruction. And, that’s where drive shredding comes into play.

When shopping around for a computer recycler, here are some guidelines for choosing a service that’s right for your business:

Proof of background checks, security controls

Reputable data security businesses love to talk about their own security measures, in part because they’ve spent so much energy and time to put them into place.

Relevant industry certifications

Look for industry certifications, such as the ISO 14001:2004, R2, and e-Stewards, which means that the company is adept at environmental management when it comes to digital waste and fully accountable for every pound of equipment that comes into their building.

Open Door Policy

Your vendor should welcome customer visits. If your vendor doesn’t allow you to see the shredding take place, quickly choose a new vendor.
Able to shred all types of drives

When it comes to deciding what drives should be destroyed, many companies neglect to include some important drives because they aren’t located in laptops or desktops. Most notable, drives within photocopiers can’t be ignored, because these drives often hold digital images of everything that’s been copied during the copier’s lifetime.

Provide proof of destruction

In some industries, such as banking and health care, regulations dictate that companies need to keep records pertaining to how, when and by what method the data are destroyed. A reputable shredding company can provide written proof tailored to these regulatory mandates.

Every year, hundreds of hulking vessels around the world are retired by their owners and sold to metal scrappers on the beaches of developing countries. The migrant workers at the shipbreaking yards have a raw deal. In India, they travel long distances, hundreds, sometimes thousands of kilometers, before landing a job at one of the shipbreaking yards. Here, they end up stripping entire ships with bare hands, sledgehammers and gas torches.

Much like illegal dumping of electronic waste in China, India, and Africa, the work often comes with a cost – to human health and safety and the environment. Old ships contain a long list of hazardous wastes – including PCBs, asbestos, lead and oil. For the workers in developing nations the opportunity to work in the shipbreaking yard often means the only chance at survival. And yet for the workers and their environment, breaking old ships can have deadly consequences.

In 1998, Greenpeace activists visited the shipbreaking yard in Alang, India posing at ship enthusiasts.

They collected samples from the yard where the workers worked and lived. Read the report HERE.

According to Marietta Harjono, from Greenpeace, “”If you sell a ship to a shipbreaking country you can earn ten to twenty million dollars. You receive the price of the steel. But you are not charged with the money for the lost lives or money for the toxic waste on board. Shipbreaking countries are paying to become polluted.”

There ARE reputable shipbreakers, much like there are reputable computer recyclers. In Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada, there is the only shipbreaking yard that meets all international standards for environmental and worker safety, but they compete for the same business that Alang, India does, and they often lose.

For more information, visit www.ban.org

Or call us.

In an age in which data can move about in the blink of an eye and mobile devices take on many forms, corporations are more at risk of losing sensitive data than ever. Large security breaches from professional hackers aside, an increasingly critical concern for industry is the risk factor associated with employees themselves.

IDC Canada reports that e-mail is the number one source of data loss, with laptops second, and removable media third. Employees and employers are both to blame, says Linda Park, senior product manager of data loss prevention for Symantec in San Francisco.  “Employees are doing things in lots of different places, and no one is bothering to clean it up or enforce policies.”

According to insurancequotes.org, “The economy loses an average of $22,346 for every time an identity is stolen. And to fully recuperate losses, repair credit and prosecute fraudsters, consumers, accountants, lawyers and IRS officials can spend up to 5,000 hours, the equivalent of two years of full-time work on a single case.”

Watch “The Hidden Cost of Data Theft”

With identity theft-related tax fraud becoming a growing problem, consumers need to protect their social security number, take on line precautions, and of course, make sure that their computers are disposed of properly. Computer recyclers that are not certified may not be wiping hard drives correctly. For more information about data security in retired IT assets, contact us.

In September, 2012, International Data Corporation (IDC) released a new multi-client study, “IT Asset Disposal and Recycling: United States Enterprise Practices and Outlook 2012-2013”. The study finds that more than one third of the companies recently surveyed do not use proper disposition methods, often adding unjustified cost and complexity to their hardware recycling practices.

The IT hardware disposition function remains undefined among many organizations, an “orphaned” function that is neither the full responsibility of IT departments nor procurement or other related functions. Because of this, the use of irrational disposition processes remains high. For instance, the use of company staff to manage donation to charity, adding to cost, risks, and loss of resale opportunity, is practiced by more than 40% of the organizations surveyed.

Likewise, the practice of storing assets is alarmingly high as is the use of municipal waste services, which leave companies at legal risk of violating U.S. environmental regulations and preventing them from finding cost containment opportunities through resale and other solutions.

The IDC study found that when organizations attempt to incorporate IT Asset Disposal best practices, they tend to focus on data security compliance and cost reduction, rather than environmental concerns or storage allocation, or future planning.

IDC says that a number of trends are likely to influence IT hardware disposition practices over the next few years, further impacting the industry itself. “Among the trends to watch are the movement toward cloud computing that could lead to lower procurement of classic assets, as well as the emergence of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), which will create a whole new set of challenges on the data security and compliance front.”

The Global e-Sustainability Initiative and the United Nations University recently released a report that states that electronic waste contains 40-50 times the amount of gold in ore mined from the ground.

According to the report, between 2001 and 2011, the electronics industry as a whole went from using 197 to 320 tons of gold. Although the computers made today use far less gold than the computers of twenty years ago (computer chips often have small gold micro plated pins rather than solid gold wiring), we are now making a substantially large amount of electronics and far more products have become computerized. Household appliances, toys, and telephones all have microchips, most of which have some gold.

Approximately only 15% of the gold in e-waste is being recovered in recycling processes. That means there is an enormous amount of gold that is not being recovered. It also means there is just as large of an amount that is being needlessly mined. The report specifies, “Accumulating in these growing mountains of e-waste, however, is a treasure trove of precious and other metals, as well as plastics – deposits of precious metals alone that are 40-50 times richer than the ores being mined in the ground, according to experts at the first-ever Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) and StEP e-Waste Academy for policymakers and small businesses co-hosted by the United Nations University (UNU) and GeSI in Accra, Ghana last week.

Ruediger Kuehr, Executive Secretary of the Solving the E-Waste Problem Initiative states, “One day—likely sooner than later—people will look back on such costly inefficiencies and wonder how we could be so short sighted and wasteful of natural resources.”

E-waste should be viewed as a commodity, rather than a nuisance. The plastics, glass, and metals all have value- either as a mined substance, or as a recyclable material.