Half of businesses don't erase sensitive data.

• Position: STUDY - Brief article

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A recent Kroll Ontrack survey warns that less than half of businesses are regularly erasing sensitive data from old computers and hard drives. Of those, 75% do not delete data securely, leaving them vulnerable to data breaches.

"Three-fourths of businesses are deleting files, reformatting or destroying drives, or 'do not know' how they are erasing sensitive data," said Jim Reinert, vice president of product development at Kroll Ontrack. "Deleting files from a hard drive only marks the files to be rewritten, which may never occur. Furthermore, reformatting the drive only removes the entries in the index or table of contents that point to the data."

Even physical destruction of a drive is no guarantee, as Kroll Ontrack said it has been recovering data from severely damaged drives, such as from the Columbia space shuttle, which disintegrated on reentering the earth's atmosphere in 2003, for more than 25 years.

Using certified data wiping software that overwrites all hard drive data or using a degausser, which wipes the data using a strong...