Certificates of Data Destruction will not Satisfy your Legal Requirements

Have you ever really looked at the certificates of data destruction you receive after hard drive wiping has completed? If you have you know that they almost always look like something a fifth grader could cobble together using paint and the internet in about three minutes (no offense to paint or fifth graders). The point is certificates of data destruction are easy to make and even easier to fake. Don’t take our word for it. If you go to Google and search “certificate of data destruction template” you too can make one! You might think that we don’t like certificates of data destruction but that wouldn’t be accurate because we provide them to customers every day. The fact is though that on their own they mean almost nothing!

Your Legal Requirement When it Comes to Data Destruction

Certificates of data destruction can be one factor in proving your companies due diligence in the event of a data breach but will they be enough to allow you to transfer your responsibility? No! In most countries a simply piece of paper that is signed is not enough to prove that your company meet its due diligence in protecting users data. By now you must be thinking that choosing a reputable company to handle your hard drive wiping and data destruction services is a must! We agree! Why?

Data Destruction & Hard Drive Wiping Require Process

A reputable company is the first key. Why? Because they will not only be certified but they will have multiple processes in place to ensure your company exceeds the various laws thereby making sure you do meet your legal requirements concerning data security. Over the last twenty six years we have used a multi-tiered process to achieve this for our customers and each step is verifiable! Although we do provide our customers with certificates of data destruction they are backed up by two independent verifications of their drives as well as complete wipe logs which are generated by our hard drive wiping software as it securely wipes each drive which allows you to go back and see the number of and type of sanitation passes as well as the serial number of each drive. These logs allow you to directly verify that the drive has or has not been completely wiped and in the event of a data breach these logs can be used to verify it did not come from those drives and even more importantly those logs provide much more detail and offer far more verifiable proof then a certificate of data destruction alone.

Reputable Company — Reputable Company — Reputable Company

It cannot be over emphasized! A reputable company is a must for your hard drive wiping and data destruction services because they will be the ones who will invest in the certifications, training, equipment, software, continual independent verification of their processes ect. It’s those things that most companies never think of when the shop for the cheapest price for their hard drive wiping and data destruction services. Don’t wait until catastrophe strikes protect yourself from data leaks and additional legal exposure.

For more information on how we do it, see our Data Destruction page.