Secure Shredding for Digital Data Media

Is Your Digital Trash a Strategic Risk?

Your company has implemented anti-virus software, encryption programs, passwords, and firewalls to make sure your digital information is secure. But if you have rewritten new data over old data on a tape or used the erase head on the drive to eliminate data, the original data is still recoverable. Even if you have degaussed your tapes before dumping them, unless you have scrupulously followed the manufacturer's instructions for each specific kind of tape, a partial image of your information may remain - and may be recoverable by someone else.

That means that if you just dump digital storage media at the end of its useful life, you may be vulnerable to one or more of these risks:

• Theft of confidential company information. Pilfering of intellectual property is estimated to have cost U.S. business $100 billion dollars in lost sales, according to the White House Office of Science and Technology. At-risk information includes personnel files, patent and research data, and confidential client information - in fact, everything from customer databases to marketing plans, legal documents, ID badges, pricing documents, financial records, and the list goes on. Much of this information could result in harm to your competitiveness if it got into the wrong hands.
• Compliance issues. Federal, state, and international privacy laws and regulations that mandate privacy and accountability for personal information are proliferating - and can result in stiff penalties. These include the Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB) Act, SEC Regulation S-P, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and Safe Harbor Privacy Principles.

Some of these laws target banks and other financial services companies or healthcare providers. However, these and other laws and regulations can also affect any company that offers its employees healthcare insurance, disposes of confidential customer information, or exchanges personal data with a European Union member.

• Environmental risks. In addition to information risks, some data storage media can release toxins into the environment over time, potentially polluting the ground water we drink and the air we breathe. For others, many landfills are closing, causing the cost of dumping to rise.

With all these potential opportunities for extra costs, liabilities, and damage to your competitiveness and reputation, how can you be sure that your business is protected when you dispose of digital storage products at the end of their useful life?

Iron Mountain Can Help -- with Secure Shredding

Since 1965 Iron Mountain has provided thousands of federal agencies, banks, and corporations of all sizes with professional, reliable services for secure shredding of all information - including non-paper data storage media -- to ensure information privacy, security, and compliance.

Our solutions for data storage media follow best practices and include:

• Safe, secure off-site shredding. Our uniformed, trained personnel collect your non-paper materials on a regular schedule - separate from your paper trash because the destruction process is different from paper shredding -- and deliver them to a state-of-the-art, secure Iron Mountain facility for pulverization and shredding. Here we completely destroy all non-paper media, such as DLT tapes, computer disks, CDs, CD-ROMs, DVDs, backup and VCR tapes in addition to binders, folders, transparencies, films, microfilms, X rays, photos, blueprints, credit cards, ID badges, and drivers' licenses - virtually any material in any format.

As a final step, we deliver the pulverized material to the appropriate de-manufacturing and recycling facilities - to ensure that its disposal is environmentally sound and all materials are recycled.

• Custom shredding programs. We will design and tailor a shredding program - including paper and non-paper destruction processes -- to meet your business needs at each location and help with employee communication and education about best practices.

Most important, our special equipment for destroying data storage media can be adjusted to pulverize different media with the varying degrees of granularity required to ensure that the information they contain cannot be re-assembled. (For example, microfilm requires finer shredding than tape to ensure the information it contains is not recoverable.)

• Compliant, accountable processes. Our processes are also designed to ensure your protection and legal compliance - with integrity audits, accountability receipts for each service performed, and destruction certification accompanying each invoice.