If you’ve kicked off your spring cleaning, you’ve probably come across piles of old junk mail, banking documents and other papers in the process; after all, unless you stay on top of decluttering, records accumulate quickly!
While you may realize the important need to shred these sensitive documents securely, are you taking into account your electronic data as well?
Hard Drives Need Protecting Too
Ensuring documents stay out of the garbage or recycling bin, is imperative in protecting your identity and in fact is a legal requirement if you’re a business owner; those old hard drives kicking around or taking up space in your storage room? Those are extremely valuable as well, if a criminal gets their hands on one. Stolen hard drives can put your security at considerable risk, and therefore should certainly be included in your “shredding pile”.
Surprisingly, even one single hard drive can store hundreds of files – Consider the confidential information that could be exposed unknowingly if these hard drives are retrieved from the garbage bin. Even if you previously decided that because files had been deleted you have nothing to worry about, unfortunately the opposite is true.
Essentially anyone with a basic understanding of technology and motive, can quickly retrieve juicy information that was thought to be deleted. This can be achieved through specific software and apps that are widely available and used by fraudsters and cyber criminals on a regular basis.
So how can you guarantee your business, staff, and customer information stays safe? Take your security a step further by turning to a professional shredding company, who will physically destroy your hard drives leaving zero chance of recovery.
Deleting a File is Not Enough to Guarantee Security
The biggest problem here is a misunderstanding about what deleting files actually results in. You would think that selecting a file and deleting, eliminates it permanently when, in fact, it does not guarantee security at all.
Were you aware that when you drop a file into your computer’s waste bin and then delete the waste bin, the file still exists on your hard drive? Deleting a file basically just hides it from the operating system. It’s not actually deleted for good until it’s overwritten by another file. Even with this approach, there is specialized software available that can be used to recover this information if the intent and desire to do so is there.
If this information is recovered without your knowledge and there happens to be personal information, finances, banking, marketing plans, budgets, etc, stored here, you may be susceptible to fraud; in other words, you’re putting yourself in a very vulnerable position that can be completely avoided with hard drive destruction services.
Why Choose Hard Drive Destruction?
For starters, any electronic device including hard drives can wreak havoc on our environment, causing significant damage to the health and well-being of our planet, animals, and humans. When hard drives make their way to our landfills, they will leak toxic elements, like mercury and lead, which can be quite harmful.
Hard Drive Destruction is Secure and 100% Reliable
When you opt for hard drive destruction, you’re taking the safest approach to data protection. Skipping this very important step in protecting your sensitive data, can contribute to several negative repercussions that surpass your identity potentially being stolen. For instance, data exposure can harm your reputation as a trusted business and therefore lead to a loss of revenue, intellectual property, and costly fines associated with non-compliance with the applicable privacy laws.
Hard drive destruction is the only method of data removal that guarantees you’re protecting electronic data, indefinitely. Carried out by qualified and trained specialists, most shredding providers can conveniently complete this process on-site at your location, through the use of a mobile shredder.
The process takes a matter of minutes, and you’ll receive a Certificate of Destruction which clearly communicates compliance and that the job was completed securely for your peace of mind. The fragments leftover are collected and sent to a recycling facility where new products will eventually be made from these pieces.
Protect Your Electronic Data with a Trusted Provider
Gator Shredding will work with you to determine your appropriate shredding needs. If you have a regular need for document shredding, we can tie in offering both hard drive destruction and document destruction together, once you’re ready for that spring purge.
Whether you are a small business, in the legal, government, healthcare, or education sector, we have worked with a variety of industries of all types and sizes.
Are you a resident or business in need of secure hard drive destruction? We service residents and organizations throughout the Mid-Ohio Valley area.
Gator Document Shredding has been keeping West Virginia and Ohio businesses secure and confidential by providing on and off site shredding. We’ll protect your sensitive documents and electronic data once and for all!