Data Santisation

Cybersecurity complacency..Why Data Sanitisation

Intellectual Property is likely the most valuable asset that a company owns. And it can often the target of cyber attacks from external sources like hackers, as well as from insider threats too.

Insufficient data sanitization leaves organizations vulnerable to identity theft and cyberattacks. This issue demands immediate action to strengthen data management and comply with regulations.

Why organizations store data ?

Companies hold on to sensitive data for too long for many reasons—despite the well documented consequences.
For example, they may want to keep data for future use, even if they remain unsure what that use is.
Some firms also lack the policies for employees to know that some data must be destroyed.
And others simply believe that data will remain secure.

A research report found that two in five enterprise IT decision-makers admitted to wasting upwards of $100,000 per year storing useless IT hardware that contains sensitive information rather than sanitizing the data and the device. There’s also the cost of storing unnecessary data in the cloud or on-prem. And that has a negative impact on the environment, with finite energy resources used to power the servers that the data sits on – contributing CO2 emissions.

Instead of taking these risks, organizations need a proactive, verifiable, and certified process to permanently destroy unnecessary data.

Doing so can ensure this data is rendered inaccessible, reducing risk, maintaining customer trust, avoiding potential fines, and limiting breach exposure. Such data erasure also ensures that an organization complies with all national, regional, and market-specific regulations.

Moving towards best practices

Some steps businesses can take to improve their data management practices include:

Developing a data management plan that outlines how data will be collected, stored, processed, and disposed of. This plan should take into account any legal and regulatory requirements for data management and should be reviewed regularly to ensure it remains up-to-date.
Regularly auditing IT equipment to identify hardware that is no longer in use or nearing end-of-life. This hardware can then be repurposed, sold, or recycled in a responsible manner.
Implementing secure data destruction processes to ensure that all sensitive data is properly removed from end-of-life IT equipment. This can include physical destruction of hard drives or the use of software-based data destruction tools.
Developing policies and procedures for handling data breaches, including incident response plans and employee training programs.

The Importance of Lessons Learned

By taking a proactive approach to data management and end-of-life IT equipment, businesses can reduce their financial costs and minimize security risks.

It’s vital that any organization that creates and stores data has a plan to safely dispose of it within a predefined, carefully-crafted company retention policy across all stages of the lifecycle.

The retention periods established through data classification also help to determine the suitable disposal dates.

Whether you’re planning an asset redeployment, technical refresh or a migration to the cloud, it’s vital to properly incorporate data erasure into your management process and keep control over your sensitive data assets until your servers or data centers have been decommissioned.

SECBOX Santisation (SS)

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Cybersecurity complacency..Why Data Sanitisation

Why organizations store data ?

Moving towards best practices

Some steps businesses can take to improve their data management practices include:

Developing a data management plan that outlines how data will be collected, stored, processed, and disposed of. This plan should take into account any legal and regulatory requirements for data management and should be reviewed regularly to ensure it remains up-to-date.

Regularly auditing IT equipment to identify hardware that is no longer in use or nearing end-of-life. This hardware can then be repurposed, sold, or recycled in a responsible manner.

Implementing secure data destruction processes to ensure that all sensitive data is properly removed from end-of-life IT equipment. This can include physical destruction of hard drives or the use of software-based data destruction tools.

Developing policies and procedures for handling data breaches, including incident response plans and employee training programs.

The Importance of Lessons Learned

By taking a proactive approach to data management and end-of-life IT equipment, businesses can reduce their financial costs and minimize security risks.

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Whether you’re planning an asset redeployment, technical refresh or a migration to the cloud, it’s vital to properly incorporate data erasure into your management process and keep control over your sensitive data assets until your servers or data centers have been decommissioned.

SECBOX Santisation (SS)