FreeGeek Central Florida

You wouldn’t want someone going through your old computer’s personal files and photos when they’re supposed to be recycling it, would you? Imagine how governments and businesses must feel when disposing of old machinery. The federal government states that there must be no security leaks at any time during the data lifecyclethis includes during trashing and/or recycling. These security issues may be one reason why so many devices are not recycled properlyusers simply do not want to let them out of their sight.The other alternative is that some users give up their devices too easily, employing only a rudimentary hard drive wipe. An IBM survey found that only 5 of people use an professional third party to go through their system and wipe it clean. In the IT industry, the standard is “3X overwriting,” meaning that a hard drive should be wiped at least three times to remove all traces of your tax information, candid photos, and other vulnerable data. Overwriting refers to the process of using software to copy meaningless data patterns over all of a hard drive’s sectors. In cases where a hard drive is compromised, overwriting is not an optionthe damaged sectors cannot be overwritten, but data may still be able to be recovered. In these cases, the user should seek out a professional authority to see if sanitization is an optionthe cleansing of private or classified material while leaving unimportant data visible.The National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) is the international association for companies offering information disposal services. “By-Laws,” a “Code of Ethics,” “Interesting Facts,” and more can be found at the association’s website at www.naidonline.org/.For hard drives to truly be recycled securely, they must remain protected from start to finish during the process. This begins with transport to the recycling area in a locked and secure vehicle, after which the hard drive is shredded and aluminum is separated from the waste with an electromagnet. The shredded remains are then securely transported to an aluminum recycling plant, and the other hard drive parts are molded into aluminum ingots.Don’t let the fear of security breaches keep you from recycling your old computers. Instead, simply do your best to make sure that your data is overwritten and your hard drive is otherwise secure.