30 November 2018

Most businesses do not wipe the data from IT equipment they have disposed of, despite GDPR legislation that came into effect earlier this year in May.

After polling 1,002 workers in full or part-time employment, value-added reseller Probrand found that 68 per cent of businesses risk falling foul of the legislation by not doing so. It also reveals that 70 per cent do not have an official process or protocol for disposing of obsolete IT equipment, while 66 per cent of staff wouldn’t even know who to approach in their company in order to correctly dispose of old or unusable equipment.

The top five industries that are most guilty of not zeroing the drives of redundant IT equipment include: transportation (72 per cent); sales and marketing (62 per cent); manufacturing (59 per cent); utilities (58 per cent); and retail (57 per cent).

Worryingly, Probrand says many companies in these sectors will have customer and client addresses and contact information on their systems.

“Given the amount of publicity around GDPR, it is arguably impossible to be unaware or misunderstand the basics of what is required for compliance,” says Probrand marketing director Matt Royle. “So, it is startling to discover just how many businesses are failing to both implement and follow some of the simplest data protection practices.

“Given these findings, it is clear that more needs to be done to ensure that all businesses have a disposal procedure in place to avoid inadvertently leaking sensitive data.”

According to the survey, other industry sectors that are guilty of not disposing of old IT equipment in a GDPR-friendly manner include: education; leisure and travel; healthcare and hospitality; trades/administration; and information and communication.

For more on the latest security solution read the October 2018 feature here: