The Drive to Destruction

09 October 2015 | Updated 01 January 1970

Old and disused data devices - hard drives, USBs, tablets, PDAs – can be sent through the post or by tracked courier, to Send & Destroy’s Hampshire-based facility to be asset listed, destroyed and recycled. An official Certificate of Destruction is provided as proof of secure disposal.

According to recent reports, the worst data breach incidents are costing UK businesses between £1.5 million and £3m on average through business disruption, lost sales and assets and damage to reputation.

In 2010 Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust was imposed with a fine for £325,000 after sensitive data of thousands of people was discovered on hard drives sold on eBay after a contractor failed to destroy 232 decommissioned drives.

More recently, the personal details of 30,000 Barclays customers, said to be missing for seven years, were discovered on a memory stick during a police raid.

But the biggest cost to businesses stemming from a data breach incident relate to business disruption caused by those incidents, with costs ranging from between £800,000 and £2.1m on average for disruption spanning four to 11 days.

Send & Destroy is part of established electrical and electronic waste management company, iWaste. It is licensed and approved by the Environment Agency and the ICO, with clients including the NHS, Odeon Cinemas and 3M UK. Every item of waste received is recycled, helping to reduce the estimated 2.5 million tonnes of electronic waste thrown into landfill by UK households and businesses every year.

Company director, Sam Mountain, saw a gap in the market for flexible, low cost data destruction, he says: “Most businesses have a glut of disused electronic equipment hanging around without knowing what to do with it or whether it holds sensitive information that could be catastrophic if it fell into the wrong hands. For many there isn’t the significant budget available for modern destruction services. Taking it to the local unsecure Waste Recycling Centre is not the answer.”

*SOURCE: PwC Report 2015.

Article written by Robin Snow | Published 09 October 2015