[windows_errors] [What_Error_Messages_Really_Mean_IBMOS2] Old Computers May Never Die (In The News)
- From: "Albert Stone" <albertj809@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: What_Error_Messages_Really_Mean_IBMOS2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 19:18:18 -0000
Old computers may never die; hard drive data should:
Every year millions of computers sign off permanently. Just how many
millions is unknown. The National Safety Council says more than 60
million home and business PCs went dark last year.
And the Environmental Protection Agency figures that within the next
five years 250 million PCs will become obsolete, ripe for
replacement.
Whatever the exact number, it's staggering. Even more staggering is
that less than one fifth of those machines are reused or recycled.
The rest end up in landfills or in storage, often at the cost of
hundreds of dollars each per year. Now a number of computer
manufacturers, including IBM, are recycling -- even buying and
reselling older computers. Using such asset recovery programs,
however, requires addressing certain security issues.
Many companies and people give little thought to the data that
lingers on old PCs, even after deleting files or reformatting the
drive. But several regulations are putting new focus on old data.
Most often, such sensitive data pertains to patient information,
financial and personnel data, proprietary documents and government
data. Much of this is protected by the Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Right to Financial Privacy Act
(RFPA) or the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLB).
IBM experts say there are only two ways to "sanitize" a drive
adequately. One is to de-gaus, or erase, the entire drive, rendering
it both unreadable and useless. The other is a process called data
overwrite, which as its name implies, replaces existing data with
new, nonsensical content.
"IBM Asset Recovery Solutions has dedicated facilities for
overwriting large quantities of disk drives," said Jennifer Van
Cise, director of Asset Recovery, Global Asset Recovery Services,
IBM. "To do that inside a company is typically just too time
consuming for IT staff."
IBM overwrites using a standard established by the U.S. Department
of Defense. "Your data is deemed to be essentially irretrievable,"
she says.
Want to Learn more,click on the link below to read or download
the 3 [pdf] files.
http://www.ibm.com/news/us/2004/08/171.html
====================================================================
Albert
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