Over the last two decades, businesses have increased the rate of data generation. With increased customer contact points, digital platforms, and tech devices, your company today generates tomes of data every day. With increased data generation, tech companies have developed cutting-edge data storage systems and devices.
But what happens when you want to retire one of these data storage devices? This is an aspect of data handling most businesses don’t consider. The most common methods of data sanitization are data erasure and physical data destruction. In this article, discover the importance of proper data destruction and a comprehensive comparison of data erasure vs. physical data destruction. Read on.
Why Does Proper Data Sanitization Matter?
Whatever industry you’re in, you appreciate the importance of proper data destruction. Without proper data strategies, your obsolete devices might be your pitfall. These devices contain sensitive data stored over a long period. From laptops, PCs, smartphones, to hard drives, and storage devices.
While throwing away such devices is what most companies do, this is a risky business practice. Consider that someone might reuse or repair the storage device and stumble upon your valuable data. With access to your company data, such individuals can cause devastating damage.
Some risks of data loss include security breaches, identity theft, financial fraud, leaking of clients’ personal details, access to company trade secrets. All these can lead to debilitating financial losses, legal penalties, loss of customer trust. Your business might even collapse after a data loss incident.
With this in mind, ensure you’ve a solid data destruction strategy in place. SPW data destruction servicesare a great strategy to protect your business. The professionals help protect your company’s reputation through advanced data destruction techniques.
What is Data Erasure?
Data erasure is one of the most secure data destruction in Malaysia. During the process, a professional data destruction service used software to overwrite data in your end-life data storage devices.
The software uses zeros and ones onto all data sectors of the storage device to render the data unrecoverable. Whether you want to dispose of the device or reuse it, you don’t have to worry over unauthorized data access.
After the erasure process, the software verifies or audits the device to confirm no one can recover the data. In addition, you get a tamper-proof, auditable certificate to confirm the erasure is successful. Depending on your business needs, you can have data erasure on-site or remotely. Automation of the data sanitization can save a lot of time.
One of the biggest advantages of data erasure is the third-party validation process. Some other techniques have no way of validation and you destroy the data and hope the data can’t be recovered.
Here are some advantages of data erasure:
- Third-party data destruction is more efficient
- Validation certification gives you peace of mind
- Offers the best protection for your business
- It’s more environmentally friendly as it allows reuse of storage devices
- You can avoid hefty fines and financial losses through proper data sanitization
What is Physical Data Destruction?
Another technique used in data sanitization is physical data destruction. The process renders the storage device unusable and makes it difficult to access data stored in such a device.
One of the popular techniques used in physical data destruction is shredding. Professional data sanitization services use commercial shredders to destroy laptops, smartphones, hard drives, printers, and other storage devices. The shredder turns these devices into tiny pieces.
Degaussing is another technique for physical data sanitization. The process involves the use of specialized equipment to disrupt magnetic fields in a storage device. The technique not only destroys the data stored but also renders the device inoperable. The problem with these data destruction problems is that you can’t verify whether the data is completely destroyed.
Some benefits of physical data destruction include:
- Allowing for easier recycling of electronic equipment
- Protecting the environment by reducing landfills
- Ideal for end-of-life electronic devices
- The data sanitization company can carry out the process on-site or off-site
Which Is Better; Data Erasure or Physical Data Destruction?
You can choose either of the techniques based on your business needs. For instance, data erasure is ideal if you want to preserve the storage devices. On the other hand, physical data destruction will work if you have old storage devices which you want to get rid of safely. What’s more, you contribute to environmental conservation by promoting recycling.
However, data erasure has a huge advantage over physical data destruction because of the validation. In addition to the efficiency and cost-savings, you enjoy peace of mind knowing there’s no way to recover the data. What’s more, you can reuse the storage device or even donate it without any fears.
Wrapping Up
Data sanitization is an often overlooked business practice. However, it can save your business from collapse. If you want to dispose of storage devices, you can choose between data erasure and physical data destruction to protect your company. The choice of the data sanitization method depends on your company’s needs. If you want to reuse the storage devices, go for data erasure. For obsolete data storage devices, physical data destruction is the best method to use.
Read Also:
- What Feature Can Join Offline Business Systems Data With Online Data Collected By Google Analytics?
- How To Unpartition A Hard Drive Easily In Windows? 5 Ways [Partition Manager]
