April 5, 2017
PII accessible on 40% of used devices?! We have your back!
Companies often wonder why they should engage the services of an IT Asset Disposition partner to sanitize end-of-life drives before disposing of equipment on the open market. One answer comes from the National Association for Information Destruction – NAID – which is the international non-profit trade association of the secure data destruction industry.
NAID recently conducted an interesting study to explore the prevalence of personally identifiable information (PII) on electronic devices offered for sale on the secondary market.
After purchasing used hard drives, tablet devices, and smart phones from a variety of well-known sources, NAID conducted their tests in conjunction with CPR Tools, Inc, using data recovery methods based on commonly-available shareware.
The devices in question came from a mix of commercial and personal/home environments, and since tablets were the worst offenders with a full 50% still holding personal data – and it’s likely that home users were less diligent than commercial users – this still indicates that some service providers are not providing sufficient data sanitization.
NAID was quick to point out that they don’t consider their findings an “indictment” of reputable providers. They state instead that the “problem lies with service providers who are not qualified and, too often, with businesses and individuals who feel they can do it themselves.”
As a NAID member, CloudBlue follows strict protocols to ensure all data is erased on PCs, servers, mobile devices, smart phones, and other data-bearing devices.
CloudBlue eradicates the data on each drive using Internationally-recognized Blancco software. Blancco software provides an erasure validation report for each media device by serial number, which provides proof of erasure for audit compliance. CloudBlue routinely audits our sanitization results, and we record all results in BlueIQ, our proprietary Asset Intelligence System, to provide our clients with an audit trail for every device.
Read the NAID Press Release here:
Personally Identifiable Information Found on 40 Percent of Used Devices in Largest Study To-Date
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