What Is Hard Drive Shredding and Why Do You Need It in Your Office?

Does your company store confidential and sensitive information on hard drives?

If so, you should never discard those hard drives down the line by simply throwing them in the trash. If you were to take that approach and your hard drives fell into the wrong hands, the information on the hard drives could potentially be compromised.

Rather than going that route, you should use a method called hard drive shredding to get rid of your old hard drives. By doing it, you'll destroy your old hard drives completely and make it impossible for anyone to access the information on them.

Before you decide to utilize hard drive shredding, though, you should learn more about what it is and how it can benefit you and your company. Let's take a closer look at how you can shred hard drives and enjoy the advantages that come along with doing it.

What Is Hard Drive Shredding?

Before we dive headfirst into how hard drive shredding can benefit your business, it's important for you to know exactly how it works. By gaining a better understanding of it, you can make a decision as far as whether or not it's right for your company.

Hard drive shredding is something that many companies choose to do when they have hard drives that have reached the end of their life cycle. They'll call on a company that's qualified to do hard drive shredding in a matter of just a few hours.

To start, the company providing hard drive shredding will usually erase all of the data that exists on the hard drives by utilizing a process that's known as degaussing. Degaussing can be used to wipe USB drives, smartphones, and, of course, hard drives clean.

Degaussing in and of itself would, in all likelihood, protect your company by making your old hard drives inaccessible. But you can really never be too careful with old hard drives.

So once degaussing has been done, the hard drive shredding portion of the process will begin. Your old hard drives will be taken and mechanically shredded with a hard drive shredder so that there is no possible way for anyone to take data off your hard drives.

And at the end of it all, a reputable company will also supply you with an official certificate verifying that you shredded your hard drives to smithereens. The serial numbers from the hard drives will be listed on your certificate to prove that you went to great lengths to dispose of your old hard drives.

Why Do You Need It in Your Office?

To some companies, the idea of doing hard drive shredding seems like overkill. Unless you're running a major financial institution or another really large company, what's the point of going through the trouble of shredding your old hard drives?

The answer is simple.

Regardless of what kind of company you run, there's a good chance you store a decent amount of data on hard drives that you should protect at all costs. From private information about your employees to the credit card numbers and addresses of your customers, there are probably all kinds of data on your hard drives.

If that data were to be stolen off your hard drives by a third party, they could potentially use it to conduct fraudulent activities. And if that happens, it could leave your employees and customers open to fraud and paint your company in a very negative light.

You could end up with a PR nightmare on your hands if people find out you didn't do everything possible to protect your company's data and hard drives. It'll make you wish you had taken the time to do hard drive shredding.

Why Onsite Hard Drive Shredding Is Best

By now, you should have a firm grasp of just how essential hard drive shredding is to those companies getting rid of old hard drives. You might even be ready to pick up the phone and schedule hard drive shredding.

But before you do, there's one more thing you should consider prior to hiring a company to shred hard drives for you. Think about if you want to take your hard drives to a facility to have them shredded or, better yet, if you want to have a company come to you to provide onsite hard drive shredding services.

Whenever possible, onsite hard drive shredding should always be your preferred option. Continue reading to learn about the benefits of using onsite hard drive shredding instead of taking your hard drives to a facility yourself.

1. Saves You Time

If you only need to have one or two old hard drives shredded, it won't be that difficult for you to throw them in a company car and take them to a facility for shredding.

But what about if you have 10, 20, 30, 40, or even 50 hard drives? Loading them all up into a car is going to take you a lot of a time. Plus, you're going to need one of your IT employees to drive them all the way to the facility and then drive back to your office, which will also take a ton of time.

Most IT teams have enough work on their plates already. Steer clear of putting one more thing on their to-do list by having onsite hard drive shredding services done.

2. Prevents You From Losing Hard Drives

One of the other things you'll need to worry about when you transport hard drives to a shredding facility is one or more of the hard drives getting lost in transit.

A hard drive could fall out of your company car when hard drives are being loaded into it and get left sitting out on the street. Or a hard drive could fall in between the seats in a company car and not end up getting shredded at the facility. A hard drive could even get lost while your IT employee is carrying hard drives into the facility upon arrival.

Rather than risk losing a hard drive, schedule onsite hard drive shredding services. It'll ensure that none of your hard drives mistakenly go missing.

3. Stops Others From Stealing Your Hard Drives

Is there someone out there who could benefit from stealing one of your company's hard drives in a big way?

If so, it's yet another reason why you should minimize your risk by having a company come to you to shred hard drives. You might leave yourself open to the possibility of a theft taking place if you make an IT employee bring your hard drives to a facility.

The key to successfully destroying hard drives is being very careful with them right up until the point when it's time for them to be shredded. Shredding them in your office as opposed to shredding them elsewhere is an easy way to take great care of them.

4. Allows You to See Hard Drives Shredded

If you're going to be shredding hard drives that have extremely sensitive information on them, you want to know that the job is going to get done as quickly as possible. You don't want hard drives sitting around in a facility where they could be compromised at some point.

With onsite hard drive shredding services, you'll be able to see your hard drives get broken down into tiny little pieces. This will relieve any anxiety you might be feeling over the safety of the hard drives.

As we mentioned earlier, you'll also get a certificate right onsite proving that the job was finished. You won't have to spend any time trying to contact a facility to find out when your hard drives will be destroyed and when you'll receive documentation for it.

5. Provides You With an Overall Peace of Mind

As a business owner, you have a million and one things on your mind at all times. You don't have enough time during an average day to stress out about something like hard drive shredding.

But you will stress out over it if you trust some company that you don't know much about to shred hard drives for you in a different location. You'll devote time to thinking about all the possible things that could go wrong.

Using onsite hard drive shredding services will remove the stress from the entire shredding process. It'll put your mind at ease and allow you to focus on more important things.

Obtain Hard Drive Shredding Services Today

Simply tossing old hard drives in the trash should never be an option for your business. You need to be more responsible than that when it comes to the security of your sensitive data.

When you use mobile hard drive shredding to dispose of your hard drives, you'll be doing the right thing for your company, your employees, and your customers. You'll also set a good precedent for how others in your company should handle hard drives and data as you move forward.

Contact us or call 800-892-2354 to hear about how we can help you shred hard drives right in your office space.