#cybersecurity | #hackerspace | End-of-Life Devices Pose Data Breach Risk

#cybersecurity | #hackerspace | End-of-Life Devices Pose Data Breach Risk

End-of-life devices not properly sanitized of data can cause compliance issues and make corporate data vulnerable


GDPR, CCPA and the rest of the alphabet soup of privacy laws should have organizations looking more deeply at how and where they store and use data. While most companies have improved their approach to data security in response to privacy laws, too many continue to ignore the data sanitization of devices at end of life, and this exposes the organization to data breaches. New research from Blancco Technology Group found that, globally, organizations’ overconfidence in their data sanitization methods makes them more vulnerable to a data breach, and nearly three-quarters of those surveyed point to the potential problems caused by end-of-life devices.


Data breaches at device end-of-life is a very big problem, said Fredrik Forslund, vice president, Enterprise and Cloud Erasure Solutions at Blancco, in an email interview. For example, a few months ago while researching how often sensitive data remains on pre-owned technology, Blancco purchased 159 drives from professional sellers using eBay in the U.S., UK, Germany and Finland. All of the drives were “guaranteed” by the sellers to be clean from data. That wasn’t the case, however: Almost half (42%) still contained data, with 15% of the information being PII and/or corporate data. Forslund said in that study they found:


  • A drive from a software developer with a high level of government security clearance, with scanned images of family passports and birth certificates, CVs and financial records.

  • 5GB of archived internal office email from a major travel company.

  • 3GB of data from a cargo/freight company, along with documents detailing shipping details, schedules and truck registrations.

  • Failing to make sure that devices are wiped clean of data sets up organ ..

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