In addition to the data breach cost data, Ponemon Institute’s global study puts the likelihood of a material data breach involving 10,000 lost or stolen records within the next 24 months at 26%. These numbers will make you lose your breath, and I hope it doesn’t make you lose sleep because of your last hard drive, media, and recycling pickup.
The entire point of this article is to raise your awareness on data breaches, and theft of data. Unless you plan to keep and redeploy not in use hard drives internally, please mechanically shred all hard drives and media storage! In my opinion the risk in using 3rd party applications to delete drive prior to disposing, or trusting someone to take your intact hard drives away isn’t worth your reputation or your companies.