Data leaked from lost, stolen or recycled IT equipment is a major, major issue. News reports about the reams of data that can be retrieved from the hard drives and memory of second hand PCs are nothing new. Organizations like the IEEE have been calling attention to the insecure storage of data for more than a decade. Enterprising reporters have subsequently found that all kinds of devices – from discarded cell phones to printers and scanners – might continue to carry. Just last month, the State of New Jersey came within a hair’s breadth of selling state-owned equipment at auction that was found to contain scads of sensitive data, including State files on abused children and foster children, state employee evaluations, tax returns, the passwords to computer systems and individuals’ Social Security Numbers.
But, as we all know, wiping old equipment of the data it contains is a laborious and imperfect process, at best. That’s why I really can’t thank Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure enough for passing along this video of a tidy solution: a mindless, automated PC and peripheral-eating monster, courtesy of the German firm JBF. Judging by the video, this Zerkleinerungstechnik (recycling technology) can digest just about anything: steel PC towers, routers, cooling fans, hard drives, you name it. You could spend a day in the server room degaussing your drives, or hire a couple out of work college students to pitch those old machines into the ravenous maw of theJBF 70/74 and let that bad boy do its work! You know what the right answer is, too, don’t you?!
