Corporate espionage continues to get worse. A single casually discarded hard drive, even one presumably encrypted and then erased, may contain terabytes of data accessible to someone with the right tools or insider knowledge. It is common practice for dumpster divers to go through trash receptacles, which are often stored insecurely — and even if they’re well-protected, once the contents leave your site, they’re fair game for anyone. Why not frustrate dumpster divers determined to turn your trash into their treasure, by giving them nothing but worthless shards of plastic and metal thanks to a hard disk crusher from Phiston?
Data erasure and data recovery software are in a constant arms race. However, no software can turn a mangled mess back into a readable drive. Cockroaches can evolve resistance to poison, but not to a boot. A hard disk crusher is the “boot”, in this case. It transcends any advances in reading magnetic traces or in breaking encryption. This isn’t entirely metaphorical — the MediaVise delivers 40,000 pounds of pressure, crushing the delicate internal mechanisms of a discarded drive.
Is this level of destruction necessary? That depends on your business. How much harm could be done if gigabytes of data — customer records, prototype software, business plans, or internal emails — were extracted from a discarded drive? Most security policies focus on external attacks via a network. They do not offer much defense if someone gains physical access to a drive. Even if the data is not valuable, the harm to a company’s reputation for customer records leakage can be catastrophic.
Do you think the MediaVise, or similar tools, might be right for you? Please contact us for more information.
