A number of universities around the world have experienced data breaches in the last several months which is part of a growing, global problem for education and for institutions seeking to protect their data. As cybersecurity threats become more apparent, student data with records such as telephone numbers, social security numbers or addresses can sometimes lead to identity theft and fraud. This poses a risk for people affected by the breach, and also impacts the reputation of institutions that are doing their best to create a safe data environment for their students, family members and staff.
Universities handle a lot of sensitive data including financial information when courses are booked and payments are transacted. Records have to be kept for certain pieces of information and sometimes this information may not be properly processed or there is a lack of data security practices – leading to older data, and disused hard drives suddenly becoming accessed by hackers who can then steal information.
There are a number of ways institutions can protect their data and even create processes where older systems are recycled so that data is removed using degaussing or a HDD destroyer. With a degausser, hard drives and old tapes can be wiped clean ensuring that historical data and archives are removed from the medium before they are disposed of or recycled. In the recycling process, once a hard drive is degaussed it can be safely crushed.
To understand more about the degaussing and hard drive crushing process, contact one of our experts and see how you can benefit from an added layer of data security by having on-site automatic or manual hard drive degaussers, and a destroyer.