From June 26-29, 2007, the Information Security Office (ISO) hosted a free service allowing campus faculty and staff to bring old hard disks and other electronic media to the Computation Center (COM) for destruction and disposal. This is the second event ISO has hosted in the last year.
The service proved to be a tremendous success—ISO reports that 1,602 old hard drives were collected and destroyed during the event.
In addition, the following other types of media were collected from a single department:
- 3,324 reel-to-reel tapes
- 20 CDs
- 782 cassettes
- 62 large cassettes
- 341 8" floppy disks
- 364 5-1/4" floppy disks
- 443 3-1/2" floppy disks
The contents of old drives and media are often unknown and may include sensitive Category-I data. The most effective way to ensure the complete removal of this data is to physically destroy these materials. Demolition of the materials gathered during the event was handled by certified vendors to ensure data removal and the safe removal of debris.
This service was offered to comply with State of Texas Department of Information Resources mandates. More information can be found on their Web site.
If you have any questions regarding data security and removal, please contact the ISO.
