It’s no longer news that nearly every digital copier made since 2002 contains a hard drive, but it seems that many people are still unaware of this fact. A CBS News Investigation first led to this shocking discovery back in 2010, yet many companies do not seem to understand the implications.
Similar to your computer, the copier hard drive stores an image of every document printed, scanned, or faxed by that machine. The stored data is unencrypted and remains on the drive until it is overwritten. When an organization is finished with a copier, the machine is all too often just sent to the dump or worse, re-sold at a discount to other businesses or individuals.
A 2008 Sharp Survey found that 60% of Americans don’t know copiers store images on hard drives. This causes problems for many organizations, whose private documents would be available to anyone who was able to remove the hard drive from the machine and download the data. As shown in the CBS video, data from insurance companies or police stations may be completely open to the next user, which could be an unknown individual overseas.
Although this investigation caused waves in 2010, many people are still unaware of the steps necessary to ensure all the data on the machine is destroyed before the copier is sent away. Copy machines need to be treated as personal computers. You wouldn’t sell your personal computer without destroying the data contained on your hard drive, so you shouldn’t sell all your secrets along with your copier!
Our certified data destruction services can capture, secure, and completely destroy the data contained within your technology equipment, not just for computers. Don’t let this major security risk remain unnoticed by your organization, make sure your data is protected.
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