Integrating a Technology Assistance Program Into Your Library

If your business is switching to new IT devices, equipment, or software, then destroying data from the old devices and equipment should be among your top priorities. It's essential to destroy your old IT equipment, which may contain sensitive proprietary business data like employee records, crucial financial data and business secrets. Poor data destruction systems and approaches can leave you with devastating repercussions such as legal liabilities, identity theft, non-compliance penalties and business fraud. And the trick to avoiding this is to choose the right data destruction method. Knowing your options is always a good place to start, and here's the guide you need.

Storage Drive Reformatting

Deleting or reformatting your storage drives is one of the standard data destruction techniques you can consider. It is easy, fast and inexpensive. Reformatting entails replacing your storage drives with new files. When done correctly by a professional, it can work to keep your data safe. However, deleting and reformatting are usually ineffective data destruction methods, albeit being cost-effective. Generally, deleting files from a storage drive doesn't entirely damage or destroy them. An IT professional can easily recover the deleted archives from the drives.

Data Wiping/Overwriting

This is another data destruction technique that involves the use of electronic techniques to overwrite all the existing data on your storage drives. Despite being effective, it usually takes quite a considerable amount of time. Therefore, it may not be the best solution if you have many devices and equipment to wipe. The main difference between wiping and overwriting is that the latter replaces your existing data with numbers in a random fashion, making it difficult for someone to decode the data.

Degaussing

This approach uses strong magnets to realign the magnetic components in your IT devices and destroy the data stored on the devices. It is quite expensive, but this pays off in its effectiveness. However, with frequent technology advancements, many modern drives don't store data magnetically. Therefore, make sure you assess the type of storage drives you use before using this method.

Physical Destruction

One of the top advantages of storage drive reformatting and data wiping or overwriting is that they allow you to keep and reuse your devices. However, this may not always be practical, especially where the data can be recovered as is the case with reformatting your storage drives. Physical destruction through shredding has, therefore, become the most standard way to destroy data. However, make sure you use professional equipment or engage a reputable shredding company, because if done incorrectly, it may still be possible to recover data from the fragments.