Does Your Vendor Practice Ethical Data Destruction?

Ethical data destruction has become an important tool that effectively safeguards your organization against data breaches originating from storage devices. But what if the company shredding your data misuses the information? What if the company you hired for shredding your data sells you out?

It is for this reason that you should get services from vendors that follow ethical practices of data destruction.

What Makes an Ethical Data Destruction Vendor?

The following norms are followed by companies that use ethical data destruction practices:

• They ensure that the data being destructed is not copied and/or sold to third parties. It is important for the companies to ensure this, else sensitive data could be at risk and severe penalties for misconduct are at stake. 
• They ensure that your data is not used against you. Just like many privacy concerns with social media platforms such as Facebook, your data can be used to predict your behavior and influence your purchasing pattern. Ethical data destruction vendors ensure that this practice does not take place.
• They ensure that confidential corporate client information does not land in the hands of competitors. Since obtaining sensitive company information could give an undue advantage to your competitor, this is an essential guarantee that quality data destruction vendors have to offer.

Since data destruction firms have access to large amounts of data relating to various individuals, companies and governments, it is essential that they follow ethical practices of data destruction.

Then, Look for Regulatory Compliance

It’s a smart idea to make sure that a data destruction vendor maintains or possesses compliance certificates with regulations of reputed organizations like HIPAA and DoD. The protocols laid down by these organizations ensure that the data shredding is carried out properly and there is no data stealing issue.

• The HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) was enacted on August 21, 1996. Sections 261 to 264 of HIPPA have laid down ground rules which regulate the process of safe data shredding. HIPAA rules are confined to the medical field. Some data shredding companies also advise you about methodologies that need to be adopted to stay HIPAA compliant.
• Department of Defense (DoD) also has a set of norms regarding data destruction. Since defense data is highly sensitive and confidential, the norms laid down by DoD are very stringent – up to seven-pass data wiping protocols for storage media, for instance. It is measures like these which leave no room for unauthorized data copying which can later result in a data theft.

For most corporate clients, we recommend you choose a data shredding firm which is DoD compliant. After all, if you are getting your sensitive data destroyed in the first place, you want to do all you can to ensure that your data does not land in unauthorized hands.