Consumers often throw away their hard drives without considering the data that is stored on them, but it turns out that this data could be recovered by people that were not intended to see it. Secure Data Recovery recently initiated a project in order to ascertain just how much data could be recovered. They worked on a hundred randomly selected hard drives, and it bears mentioning that these are different from solid state drives.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that over 5.7 million files were recovered. Granted, 3.1 million of these files came from a single hard drive, but in spite of the fact that this is the case, 35 of the hard drives were still recoverable.
Many users assume that damaged hard drives are less risky because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making the information inaccessible. However, this analysis showed that 30 damaged HDDs still had data that could be salvaged.
This just goes to show that throwing away HDDs that have private data on them can be a serious security risk. The only way to ensure that your data does not end up falling into the wrong hands is by destroying it completely, and the majority of users don’t think to take this final step with all things having been considered and taken into account.
Just 1% of the users that were surveyed said that they encrypted their HDDs, which can make it harder to crack them than might have been the case otherwise. Consumers need to be educated about the dangers of disposing of hard drives without sanitizing them first, as well as the importance of encrypting the drives as and when possible.
Drilling several holes into the drive might be the most effective way of rendering the data inaccessible. Users should familiarize themselves with these methods, otherwise the long term fallout could be quite dire since the data can be used by malicious actors who happen upon the HDDs.
Read next: The Dark Side Of Artificial Intelligence: What Americans Are Worried About AI
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that over 5.7 million files were recovered. Granted, 3.1 million of these files came from a single hard drive, but in spite of the fact that this is the case, 35 of the hard drives were still recoverable.
Many users assume that damaged hard drives are less risky because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making the information inaccessible. However, this analysis showed that 30 damaged HDDs still had data that could be salvaged.
This just goes to show that throwing away HDDs that have private data on them can be a serious security risk. The only way to ensure that your data does not end up falling into the wrong hands is by destroying it completely, and the majority of users don’t think to take this final step with all things having been considered and taken into account.
Just 1% of the users that were surveyed said that they encrypted their HDDs, which can make it harder to crack them than might have been the case otherwise. Consumers need to be educated about the dangers of disposing of hard drives without sanitizing them first, as well as the importance of encrypting the drives as and when possible.
Drilling several holes into the drive might be the most effective way of rendering the data inaccessible. Users should familiarize themselves with these methods, otherwise the long term fallout could be quite dire since the data can be used by malicious actors who happen upon the HDDs.
Read next: The Dark Side Of Artificial Intelligence: What Americans Are Worried About AI
