Data Destruction
Due to the increase in Data Theft over the past few years, we have noticed more and more businesses are holding onto their hard drives from Pc’s/Servers and laptops that are being sent off for recycling.
We recently came across a company which had been storing their hard drives for the last fifteen years and totaled approximately two hundred and thirty in all. This was because the Directors where worried about the data falling into the wrong hands.
What most companies do not realise is they are breaking the law by doing this. Under the Seventh Principal of the Data Protection Act 1998 it states that, all organisations must employ a data destruction service to destroy all redundant and confidential information, which can be in either paper or electronic format. Obviously this also needs to be certified to prove you have done so.
There are different time scales for different sorts of data which needs to be destroyed. For example: accounts records should be six years plus the tax year you are in. Whatever the time, failure to comply with the act carries a minimum £500,000 fine. This fine was recently increased from £5000 to highlight the importance of data security.
If you feel you can’t trust an outside company to destroy your data off-site, or use a company like ours to do it onsite, you can easily download free data wiping software yourself from the internet. (Active Kill Disk for example) Once you have wiped the disks and feel happy you can then get them collected by a company like ours that will wipe them again and give you the certification you need to keep within the law. That way you can feel assured, you keep within the law and the hard drive can be recycled which is great for the environment.
Recycling Your IT can do all types of data destruction from paper to electronic. We are registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) for data protection (No. PZ2793518) and licensed by the Environment Agency (EA) for data shredding. (No. EPR/GH0610YU/A001)
| Call us today on 01279 215000 to find out how we can help you dispose of your IT equipment in a socially responsible way. |