As the amount of data created and stored continues to grow at unprecedented rate, ensuring data destruction has become a bigger challenge for the companies
The pandemic has encouraged companies across the world to accelerated digitisation and drive digital transformation efforts. Along with other enterprise-wide initiatives, this has paved a way for a digital-centric ecosystem.
Managing the stored data is critical for business since digital storage is set to expand manifold. International Data Corporation (IDC) in its annual Data Sphere and Storage Sphere forecasts published last year, mentioned that thea mount of digital data created over the period of next five years will be greater than twice the amount of data created since hte advent of digital storage.
REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE
A Blancco - Deloitte report - THe price of Destruction: Exploring Financial & Enviromental costs of public Sector Device Sanitisation, had important points to make. In the United Kingdom, due to the accelerated rate of change in the healthcare and social care systems, organisations had to compress three to five years of digital transformation into just 12 months.
This change is forcing through innovations to meet public service demand, new ways of working, easier access to information and a heightened need for resiliency. An increased number of data breaches and the accompanying costs has driven the change.
THis report states that between 2020 and 21, the average cost of breach surged by 78.7 percent globally from $ 1.08 million of $ 1.93 million. THe healthcare breach cost increased by 29.5 percent from an average total cost of $ 7.13 million in the year 2021 to $ 9.23 million in the year 2021. That cost should be enough for businesses to sit up and take notice.
Studies like the Blancco - Deloitte report have further highlighted hte importance of data security and data destruction at the end of its life cycle. The end - of - life of data is often determined by factors such as fulfilment of purpose or validity of consent.
WHY OPT FOR DATA DESTRUCTION?
Companies take years to build businesses and attract clients. THe future of business depends on retaining and widening client base. Customer data of any kind regardless of how out of data the information may be is critical to continuity of trust. By opting for professional and efficient data destruction services, companies can provide trust to their clients that theri data is secure and is always safe.
To save cost and optimise the use of digital real estate, companies are opting for digital services like cloud and moving away from hard copies. Storage of data beyond its mandated retention period makes an organisation more vulnerable to challenges such as data breach or regulatory non - compliance. Along with organisational risks, the correct technology implementation can help lower data management and retention costs, in both the short and long run.
Countries across the world hold organisations collecting and processing personal data responsible for effective sanitisation at the end - of - data lifecycle. Globally 69 percent of the countries have data protection and privacy legislation in place.
Laws like the UK Data Protection Act (DPA), Japan's recent AMended Act on the Protection of Personal Information (Amended APPI, effective April 2022) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) has been instrumental in guiding companies on how personal information can be use.
Enterprises must bear in mind that forensic methods can still be employed to recover data. Physical destruction of the asset, though, can make data unreadable and irrecoverable. That could also mean that asset's value, if any, will have to be written off. Unlike physical destruction, a process- driven approach to data destruction can also be subject to an audit.
For companies, the ideal way for data destruction is dependent on the type of media, the sensitivity of the data and the value of the assets where it has been stored.
In today's digital age, data is the new gold! it's not enough to safety store and transmit data, it is even more important to securely destroy data which might potentially be used with nefarious intentions. Companies need to have a robust policy on data destruction on assets which are beyond our physical reach and on assets which have to be retired due to tech advancement BY JOSEPH GEORGE ( FOUNDER SUNDAY TECH)