Secure Data Destruction, Disposal and Sanitisation

Expiration of data and the destruction or disposal of data is an important part of the data management lifecycle. Data may be disposed of for many reasons, the most common being:

  • Data being migrated from tape to cloud storage
  • End of life media no longer required
  • Results of data consolidation and merge/purge/indexing projects
  • Retention guidelines permitting disposal and data reaching expiry dates
  • Pre or post company acquisition.

The importance and complexities of data destruction and disposal is often it is overlooked and as a result, data may be disposed of improperly allowing open and unauthorised access to sensitive data.

Tape Ark understands the importance of not only recovering critical data from tapes but also the need to ensure that confidential information assets require a permanent and secure disposal solution.

Tape Ark offers a range of data destruction and sanitisation services which provide secure, permanent and confidential destruction of your data (tapes and disk drives). Our methods include data erasure, data degaussing and the physical destruction of the storage medium – whether they are data tapes, disk drives, optical media or other data storage devices.

Logical Data Wiping

Dependent on the level of sanitisation required, logical data wiping can be used for two purposes. The first would be if you want to re-use your tapes Tape Ark offers a service to erase your media for re-use within your own organisation or for second-hand re-sale. This is also ideal for leased equipment and charity donations. In this scenario, the media tapes undergo a front to back erasure process, wiping all existing data and preparing them for re-use.

Where tapes are not required for reuse or resale, Tape Ark can add an additional layer of destruction security, by degaussing the tape media.  This process involves re-orientating the magnetic domains of the media to forensically wipe data and prevents the media from being read or reused in the future.

Physical Media Destruction

Physical media destruction is the end of the line for all data and storage media.  It involves the physical destruction of the tape via dismantling, shredding or incineration, therefore ensuring that any form of data recovery is no longer viable.

There are a number of alternatives that can be undertaken in order to achieve this; however, the result is the same with the media no longer functional and the data irretrievable.  Tape Ark understands that organisations have differing security, ethical and environmental standards and requirements. They also have different budgets for the disposal of data. As a result there are multiple physical data destruction options available.

  • Tape Dismantling
  • Tape Crushing
  • Tape Shredding
  • Tape Incineration
  • Disposal of tapes in landfill
  • Recycling of plastics and materials into other goods.

Destruction Certificates

At the completion of any physical media destruction and sanitisation process, the client is issued formal certification outlining the details of the sanitised media and the process undertaken with the wiping or destruction of the media. This is to ensure that the client can perform their due diligence for internal and external regulatory purposes.

Solutions

Tape Ark prides itself on its technical capability. Customers feel assured their objectives and unique challenges are well understood – what’s important to them, where they’re headed, and the opportunities that lie ahead.

Get in touch

If you are unable to find your media from our extensive list, please get in touch – we’ve seen them all.

The Maverick Mindset
Knowledge is power – but only if the knowledge is accessible. To move forward we must look back, understand the data we have and start thinking about how to utilize it – this is a big data frame of mind.

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