
Imagine you wake up to find that your gym just placed all your health and gym membership records in a skip, outside their premises. Everything you've told them, including physical issues, and card payment details - in the bin for anyone to see.
Now imagine a gust of wind takes those records and blows them across the car park, and across the street for anyone to pick up.
This is what happened at a local gym, and it wasn't until we stepped into the gym to ask what was going on, that they rectified the issue! Apparently, a member of staff was clearing out an old cupboard with paper records and hadn't been told not to simply 'dump' this information. This included;
Name and address
email
Bank name
Card numbers
Sort code
Account number
CVV number
Date of Birth
Sex
Health and medical conditions
So what?
All this information could lead to someone having their identity stolen, or at the very least someone acting fraudulently and spending on their account.
Why is Data Destruction important?
We worked with a business that was happily giving old devices to their staff, and on some occasions giving them to local charities.
Although this sounds like a nice thing to do, old equipment can contain confidential data and they were giving it away(!)
Devices included old mobile phones, laptops and tablets. When we looked into this further, data destruction hadn't really been considered and although some devices were reset, others were not.
🤔 WHAT ABOUT YOU? 🤔
What do you have stored in your drawers at home? Any of the above? What do they contain? What are you going to do with them?
In business it's important to destroy of old papers and equipment in a secure way (using fires, physical and digital shredders or simply factory resets).
Do you throw your bills in the bin? Shouldn't you shred them first? Or burn them on a home fire?
You don't need to be a technical guru to protect your data. Take simple steps to protect your digital and physical lives.
🚨WHAT YOU NEED TO DO 🚨
✅ Use a shredder for confidential papers containing sensitive/personal data
✅ Power-up old devices and then perform a 'factory reset' on the device(s)
✅ Remove hard drives from old servers and PCs and destroy with a hammer(!)
✅ Use a company that will destroy old equipment for you
'Dumpster Diving' is the term used by those who go through your rubbish to find information that can be used against you. In the story above, there was no need to go hunting for the information as it was already in a 'skip', and also all over a car park.
Clearly they didn't give data proper respect (GDPR), but what about you? Are you doing what you can to protect your own, and your companies sensitive and personal data?
Make sure you care for data its entire life, no matter where it's stored.
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