IT company warns of identity thieves targeting used hard drives for information

Residents and companies are urged to ensure that personal and company data is properly erased from hard drives before they are sold or donated.

This caution comes from Wale Arewa, chief executive officer at Xperian, who explained that identity thieves often targeted used hard drives to access information.

“We live in a world where personal and company information is a highly valuable commodity; it is important that people do everything they can to stop their details from falling into the wrong hands,” he explained.

Arewa added that removing this data meant more than simply hitting the delete button, explaining that, despite the notion that doing this will remove the information forever, it was easily still recovered.

He also offered tips on the best ways to ensure that the data is erased completely, including digital data elimination, degaussing and physically shredding the hard disk.

“Data must be erased using one of the three methods in order to be compliant with the Protection of Personal Information Act 2013 and also to ensure that a company’s intellectual property does not fall into the wrong hands,” Arewa stressed.

Advance digital data elimination referred to allowing the hard disk drive to be reused, making this method the most environmentally compliant, while degaussing included using a magnetic charge to eliminate data, which also destroyed other components of the hard disk drive, ensuring double protection.

Physical shredding, meanwhile, referred to crushing the hard disk drive and mangling it into tiny 25mm pieces, ensuring data is eliminated and making the hard disk drive unusable.

Arewa concluded by stressing the consequences of failing to completely erase sensitive information from a hard drive before donating or selling it. “Failure to carry out one of the… data destruction methods may lead to serious penalties [and] more importantly, the loss of data could lead to your company’s reputational damage.”