When running a business, protecting data, intellectual and physical property is of paramount importance. At the same time, having up-to-date and current technology is great to keep the business moving forward. So, how can you manage the disposal of electronic waste safely and sustainably?
Having secure e-waste management can really help to streamline this process. In this article we will outline the importance of secure e-waste management for your business.
What is e-waste management?
E-waste, or electronic waste, management refers to the disposal of IT assets in a secure, yet sustainable way. This means finding the most ecologically friendly and data safe way to deal with electronics that are no longer in use. This could be anything from mobile phones and tablets, to laptops and desktop computers.
E-waste management can include IT recycling, as well as shredding and data destruction.
Why is e-waste management important?
E-waste management is important, particularly for businesses, in order to avoid harmful data breaches and damage to the environment.
GDPR compliance and government guidance means that you may be required, legally, to handle sensitive data carefully. This includes, but is not limited to, customer or employee records and information, historic and present day.
Similarly, ineffective e-waste management could endanger the security of other sensitive data, such as financial information, stored on the old computer systems.
E-waste can also be really harmful to the environment. Improper disposal of electronics could mean that e-waste ends up in landfill. Unfortunately, lots of technology contains materials that are toxic to humans. If not disposed of properly, this could find itself into our atmosphere, and increase pollution.
How can you dispose of it securely?
Although e-waste management ensures that electronics are disposed of in a way that reduces harm to the environment, it also prioritises destruction of data and protection of your assets.
Whilst data wiping could be an option for certain information and files, to ensure that your data is truly secure when disposed of, we go one step further- we have all hard drives physically shredded. For mobile and tablet devices, we remove and shred SIM cards before the items are re-set back to factory defaults, as well as deleting any and all data.
This ensures that data cannot be recovered due to human error when using software removal devices. This eliminates any potential security risks to your data whilst remaining GDPR compliant.
We also provide a Certificate of Data Destruction, to keep for your records and for peace of mind.
Overall, the protection of your company data is important. That’s why having secure e-waste management, data destruction and disposal is the best way to keep your confidential company documents and information safe when you upgrade your tech and systems.
At PriorityWEEE, we are leaders in IT recycling, data destruction and e-waste management, so you can trust that your data will be safely, securely and sustainably managed.
Contact Priority WEEE today to find out more about e-waste management.