Companies are tossing their old tech like crazy lately with all the upgrading going on. But businesses need to make sure they don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater — meaning all that sensitive business data on the old hard drives.
“Never listen to the guy in the pickup who says he’ll take your old equipment away for free,” says Gina Chiarella, COO of e-waste disposal company We Recycle!, Inc. “That’s the quickest way for your data to end up on a flea market table.”
Getting rid of old technology can be hazardous, since there’s very likely sensitive data still on it. Even if you’ve erased and reformatted, computer hard drives contain loads of data you don’t want to let outside of your firewall – e-mails, contracts, planning documents, employees’ personal information, credit cards, and much more reside on these hard drives. Besides identity theft, data loss may leave you or your company liable under federal laws such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, Graham-Leach-Bliley or under state laws. Criminal penalties include fines and prison terms up to 20 years. Not to mention the civil suits that can result.
Read how to protect your data here.
Credit: Bill Pfleging | Inc. Technology
