Has your business experienced a data breach yet? If not, it’s probably only a matter of time. Someone in the office might download an attachment from a phishing email and accidentally spread malware. There could be a breach in some cloud-based software program your company uses, or your data could be exposed in a vendor’s data breach. Someone could steal some physical records from your business. Because there are so many risks, in so many places, data risk management is all about vigilance.
That’s why services like hard drive shredding and paper shredding are still essential for good data risk management. Risk management requires you to keep a watchful eye on all your data, including physical data, and not just focus on things like the newest trends in cyberattacks. It’s all about having processes in place to safeguard data, in absolutely every place that your business stores it.
Data Risk Management in 2024: What’s Really at Risk?
We’ve all heard about massive data breaches at healthcare organizations or financial institutions. Those stories make headlines many times a year. If you’re an owner of a smaller business, a devastating data breach might seem like something that only happens to big companies that have been targeted because they have so much data. With that “it can’t happen to us” mentality, it’s easy to get too lax with data risk management.
IBM’s annual Cost of a Data Breach Report gives us a snapshot of how real businesses have been impacted by data breaches over the last few years. The 2023 report included some alarming findings, and some interesting ones. Here are a few of the statistics that might be especially relevant for business owners, no matter the size or type of your business:
- Data breaches have gotten (a lot) more expensive. The average cost of a data breach rose 15% between 2020 and 2023. The new average cost was $4.45 million last year!
- In a huge number of data breaches (nearly 40%), companies lose data “across multiple environments.” In other words, thieves are able to access data that’s stored in multiple places, including in the cloud and on-premises in the company’s physical location. The report says this statistic demonstrates that “attackers were able to compromise multiple environments while avoiding detection.”
- Most organizations that experienced a data breach (57%) elected to pass some of the costs along to consumers in the aftermath. Presumably this means that a lot of companies raised their prices… right after notifying their customers that they’d allowed a data breach.
Hard Drive Shredding as Part of Good Data Risk Management
Private data stored in all environments, in digital or physical form, has some level of exposure risk. Hard drive shredding lets you ensure that none of the data stored on your hard drives is exposed when your business is done with them. Some elements of data risk management are complicated, but this one’s pretty straight-forward: As long as your business uses computers and other electronics, hard drive shredding should remain a core part of your data security strategy.
Hard Driving Shredding vs. Other Disposal Methods: What’s Riskiest?
Maybe you agree that your business should be careful about how you get rid of hard drives, but aren’t entirely convinced that hard drive shredding is the best disposal method for risk management. Consider these points:
- Looking at business risk management more broadly: Inefficiency is a big risk to a company’s financial success. Hard drive shredding is generally going to be the most efficient way for a business to dispose of obsolete drives. No one has to waste time overwriting data or trying to drill holes into old drives. Just drop them straight into a locked collection bin until your shredding service comes to pick them up.
- What about environmental risk? If sustainability is a top concern, you might wonder about the merits of wiping functional hard drives and finding someone who can reuse them, vs. destroying those materials. Giving a device that stored company data to a new owner goes against risk management best practices, even if you believe you’ve wiped everything. Opt for hard drive shredding just to be safe. And make sure that the shredding service you choose recycles any reusable components they recover.
- Communicating and enforcing data disposal policies helps create accountability for the workforce. Make sure the employee handbook explains that hard drives are collected, tracked and shredded at end-of-life. Just in case anyone ever considers trying to steal or swap out the drive in a company computer, you want it to be clear that you track devices carefully and that serial numbers will be checked before drives are destroyed.
Need Help with Secure Hard Drive Shredding?
When your business’s data is at risk, your entire business is at risk. A strong risk management strategy requires you to have relationships with vendors you know you can trust. Northeast Data Destruction provides hard drive shredding services in our secure NAID “AAA” certified facility, using powerful commercial shredders that rip hard drives into pieces not much bigger than confetti. If you need any help creating good processes for secure data disposal, I encourage you to contact me today.