5 Ways To Securely Dispose Of Data

Does your company securely dispose of data? Read our post to learn the best way to dispose of your data securely and keep your confidential data out of the hands of threat actors.

Regardless of industry or scale, businesses today rely heavily on data to drive their company forward. As such, most companies share one common problem: what to do with their data when it’s no longer needed. To make matters worse, more and more cybercriminals are on the prowl, targeting strictly confidential data.

Companies must dispose of their physical and digital data safely and efficiently to avoid data breaches and violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). That’s where we come in. In this article, we’ll show you five ways to securely dispose of your data.

Why Is It Important To Securely Dispose Of Data?

Let’s start by looking at why it’s so important to dispose of data securely. Unfortunately, we now live in a world where data breaches are becoming more and more common. In a 2023 report, it was reported that over 353 million people were impacted by data breaches in 2023 alone.

These breaches resulted in the loss of sensitive personal data, such as personally identifiable information, passwords, IP addresses, and credit card details. The loss of this data can have devastating consequences.

From a company standpoint, data breaches can result in productivity loss, fines, and a bad reputation. Securely disposing of data ensures cyber attackers cannot compromise it, lose it, steal it, use it in a data breach, or expose it publicly.

5 Ways To Securely Dispose Of Data

Shredding

It might sound old-school, but shredding is still one of the most common forms of data disposal. However, you’ll be surprised by how many companies either don’t have a shredding system, don’t do it correctly, or don’t do it at all.

Shredding data is a quick, easy, and effective way to securely dispose of data. Furthermore, it’s one of the most environmentally friendly ways to destroy data.

However, effective shredding must be done to a professional standard using micro-cut and cross-cut techniques to prevent different forms of data from being reassembled.

While most businesses use an in-house shredder to destroy physical forms of data, such as strictly classified documents or hard drives, other companies use secure data destruction companies to shred data, including data from USBs, mobile phones, and DVDs.

Degaussing

Degaussing is a quick and effective method for disposing of digital data, especially if your company has a large amount of sensitive data or information to destroy. Digital storage devices like hard drives and USB sticks store data using magnets.

Degaussing destroys the data stored on an electronic medium by eliminating the device’s magnetism using a high-powered magnet. A degausser machine generates a magnetic field that reverts devices to neutral, erasing all their data.

Many degaussing machines also have a built-in shredder to destroy the item once the data has been erased. However, there are some downsides to degaussing.

For starters, degaussing an electronic device renders it inoperable. Secondly, you can’t verify complete data destruction if the hard drive doesn’t work. Therefore, it is recommended that you use a reliable third-party data destruction company.

Physical Destruction

The physical destruction of physical data is common because it’s an efficient way for companies of all sizes to dispose of data.
It takes very little time and is highly likely to succeed. When most people think about physical destruction, they picture themselves taking a hammer to their laptop or hard drive. While this is a popular way to destroy data physically, it’s not always the most efficient or reliable.

Physically destroying storage media, such as CDs or hard drives, involves breaking it into small pieces, rendering any data on them useless and impossible to retrieve. We recommend using professional services to guarantee this is done effectively.

When a company uses a professional service, it receives a certified data destruction certificate. This is important for adhering to strict security and compliance standards.

Erasing

Erasing data is a surefire way to dispose of sensitive data and information without destroying your media source. Erasure is an excellent option for most companies because it’s cost-effective, environmentally friendly, and reliable.

Erasure should destroy all the data stored on a hard drive and provide the user with a certificate of destruction, proving successful completion. Use data-erasing software to securely erase data on an electronic medium and replace it with other data.

This software will successfully wipe data, allowing you to reuse your device or hard drive to store new data. Examples of software that allows companies to erase data on hard drives and other devices include Disk Utility, Blancco, and BitRaser.

Erasing data is especially important for companies that have purchased equipment off-lease, such as laptops and desktop computers.

Incineration

According to Incer8, “destruction by incineration is the most complete and reliable method for highly sensitive documents and papers.” Having an incinerator on-site to dispose of your data yourself is better value for money, but the initial outlay is high.

Therefore, most companies that dispose of data through incineration use an external company.

With a third-party incineration company, companies can rest assured that their private and confidential data is in the hands of the professionals, who will destroy it effectively, responsibly, and correctly.

It also gives companies peace of mind that their documents are completely destroyed and in no way readable or traceable. Once your data has been disposed of, you will usually receive a certificate confirming the data has been incinerated and disposed of responsibly.

Securely Dispose Of Your Data

Considering that 80% of data breaches are caused by human error, now’s the time to ensure your team knows how to effectively and securely dispose of data. In this article, we’ve covered why it’s important to dispose of data securely and five ways to do it.

While the method you use to destroy data will depend on your company’s specific needs and requirements, you should at least have a reliable shred-it-all policy and data-erasing system in place. Doing so will ensure your employees know exactly how and when to dispose of data.

This will ensure your company doesn’t fall victim to unnecessary and harmful data breaches.

Please contact us for more information about how DIESEC can help you stay cyber-secure.