In this article, I offer IT recycling’s opinion on the usefulness of on-site digital information destruction. If you take computers (or servers) out of service then it is important that the digital information be destroyed neatly, we think. Basically, you have three ways to do this. We discuss them 1 by 1.
You can do all by yourself – turn on each computer yourself and use wipe software to delete the data
By now, every system administrator knows how to erase a hard drive. Big advantage of doing it yourself is that you can be sure it’s done and you don’t have to trust anyone’s blue eyes. You don’t hand over anything with data on it. But there are also disadvantages to doing it yourself. First, it is extremely time-consuming and therefore usually much more expensive than having it done. In addition, you have to organize things really well to make sure you don’t skip anything at all. And hard disks that are defective or cannot be wiped for some other reason you then have to destroy yourself. But hitting it with a hammer or drilling a hole is really not safe enough.
Bringing equipment and having a service provider do it for you
There are now quite a few companies and small businesses in the Netherlands that offer this type of service. And in almost all cases, the most wonderful certificates and registrations are being shined. We do need to realize that destroying data just always costs a service provider (a lot of) money. Think of several euros per computer, we are talking about COST PRICE. So it is definitely worth issuing a nice certificate and not destroying data at all. Unfortunately, this also happens. And then about the certificate. So with a certificate, you are nicely covered if problems arise. So you will NOT be ONSLOSED, and neither will your supervisor. So that certificate is actually just a piece of paper used to keep the black mark away. But the certificate itself gives no guarantee and no assurance. IT recycling believes that in many cases companies pay for data destruction and get nothing at all in return. No security of any kind, just a bill. We at IT recycling do what we promise and your data is truly destroyed when you pay for it. That is why we are not the cheapest. We were the first in the Netherlands to start destroying data and we can also say that we are very good at it. Our advice : Have data destroyed without you being there really only by parties you are very sure you can trust. After all, you can’t control them. When it comes to really sensitive information: never hand it over, to anyone. Then on-site destruction is the only option.
On-site destruction
The downside: On-site hard drive destruction is more expensive, but usually still much cheaper than doing it yourself and at least a lot faster and more convenient. Another drawback: computers without hard drives are usually unsellable, at least worth much less. But the benefits, of course, are really huge. You see for yourself how the hard drives are broken. That does give real assurance. IT recycling has unquestionably the best service for on-site hard drive destruction. Only IT recycling can destroy hard drives on site into pieces the size of confetti. And only we can do that at a rate of more than 1,000 hard disks per hour. Furthermore, we will remove the hard drives from the computers for you free of charge and also clean up the computers themselves for you.