When it is time to dispose of your old equipment it is important to ensure that all sensitive data is cleaned off of the system so that it does not get into the wrong hands when you decide to get rid of the machine.  This ensures that you remain secure and nobody can steal your data.

According to Tech Republic, “Don’t assume that taking hard drives to the landfill is secure. If there’s sensitive data on your drives, you need to get rid of it before taking it away. Even if you don’t think there is any sensitive data on the drive, consider whether you’re willing to bet the business on that — and if not, do more than just chuck the drive in the trash. Even reformatting or repartitioning a drive to “erase” the data it stores isn’t good enough these days (if it ever was); tools such as the shred utility can help you delete files more securely. Encrypting the data on the drive before doing any deletion can help make data even more difficult to recover later.”

If you have any questions, or are looking to upgrade your network, contact Marcus Networking at 602.427.5027.

Source: Chad Perrin, Tech Republic. (April 21, 2011). “10 things you should do to securely dispose of computers”.