Safely discarding sensitive hard drive data to maintain customer trust

A media shredding service can help avoid the security risks of storing private data on hard drives

In the modern workplace, companies are generating an unparalleled amount of information. And with the sophisticated technology to harness large volumes of information for superior analytics generation, businesses across a wide variety of industries are holding onto more significant amounts of paper and digital data for longer periods of time.

Consequently, while enterprises across the globe are able to leverage this information for better decision making, there is a natural increase in security threats.

Responding to the necessity to spread information about enterprise-level security issues and how to address them, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada recently commissioned a survey to determine how businesses across the nation's provinces are protecting their digital data.

After surveying more than 1,000 companies across the country, it was discovered that 23 percent of the polled respondents store personal information on portable hard drives, which are incredibly susceptible to theft.

However, it was also reported that 48 percent of the respondents do not have encryption to protect hard drive data, meaning that if it is lost, discarded or stolen, the thief can see and manipulate whatever is stored on the device with no difficulty at all.

And as Canada's privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart points out, "Businesses that lose their customers' data, lose their customers' trust, so they need to take every precaution to ensure they safeguard personal information they hold."

In order to avoid a loss of consumer trust, businesses holding onto sensitive hard drive information would be well advised to partner with a shredding service experienced in hard drive destruction. By taking this measure, professionals can help design a corporate shredding program in which unnecessary or outdated hard drive data is permanently destroyed and employees are trained on the best practices for secure data disposal.

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