8-6-2009

Imation Alerts Companies to the Risks of Improper Disposition of Used Product
We're sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site.

Imation Corp., a respected removable storage vendor, recently said that data centers are facing high risks of losing sensitive data, including important financial information, due to selling used products without properly cleaning them.

 

According to security experts, various kinds of information such as social security numbers, patient health records, internal auditing procedures and bank account numbers are leaking from data centers. This worrisome trend has emerged because companies are improperly disposing of used data storage devices at the end of life.

 

For example, there is an increasing practice of selling used computer tape cartridges to recertifiers, which, Imation tests revealed, is done without first properly wiping data from them.  Though recertifiers claimed that they had removed it completely, a significant amount of data remained intact because of the high capacity of cartridges, exposing it to breaches.

 

Security experts also said that the chances of data leaks escalate when a financially burdened data storage manager sells the tape containing company information to a reseller that claims it will completely destroy or erase the data from the device. In reality, however, the reseller generally recertifies the tape without properly removing the data and sells it in the market. Several investigations have shown that the data storage managers are often unaware that company sensitive information and customer data are saved on these cartridges.

 

This failure to save data properly has resulted in increased cost to companies every year, said industry analysts. Ponemon Institute released a report in the year 2006 that disclosed the average cost to a company for losing a single customer record due to data breach was $182. With thousands of customers on a single storage device, it’s quite simple to imagine the severe financial burden such loss places upon a company.

 

Security experts suggest that companies should encrypt data to save themselves from cost incurred in leakage in the event that the disposed storage device is not wiped off completely.