Undead Data Haunt the Enterprise

Every device your company issues to employees will die someday, but the data on it can live forever – unless you know what to do about it. Each year companies buy millions servers, laptops, smartphones, and so on, many of them to replace machines aging out of service. It’s as important to have an end-of-life process as it is to build a business case for buying hardware in the first place. "From a data security point of view I think that both corporations and consumers need to appreciate some of the risk that they could be exposing themselves to with all of the wonderful new devices that we carry around with us every day," says Steve Skurnac, president of Sims Recycling Solutions, Americas (an interested party, no doubt, but he’s got a point). "Companies spend a lot of time on security procedures when units are in use, but what they may not realize is that when units are taken out of circulation…they need to do as much diligence with what will happen to the units when they get recycled or returned as they do when employees are using them."