Wednesday, 16 August 2006

Second Hand Disks Carry Confidential Information

The University of Glamorgan in Wales and Edith Cowan University in Australia has issued a report based on research to determine whether second hand computer disks that were purchased from a number of sources still contained any information or whether the information had been effectively erased. The report concludes that a large number of the disks examined still contained significant volumes of sensitive information.

The research has revealed that the results, whilst an improvement on those from the previous year's research, still show an alarming level of sensitive information being released and states that despite an increasing maturity of information security and awareness, increasing regulations and significant publicity, organisations are still not modifying their procedures to ensure that information is effectively removed before computer disks are disposed of.

Dr Andy Jones, Head of Security Technology Research at BT, who led the research said, "So much has been said already about the availability of information disposal tools, increasing legislative pressures and the growing literacy of computer users that it is difficult to explain why there is still such poor cleansing of disks. When organisations dispose of surplus and obsolete computers and hard drives, they must ensure that, whether they are handled by internal resources or through a third party contractor, adequate procedures are in place to destroy any data and also to check that the procedures that are in place are effective."

Dr Andrew Blyth who leads the research team at the University of Glamorgan commented, "Now in its second year, this research proves that companies and individuals still need to take this issue of the disposal of information stored on hard drives more seriously. Just from looking at this random sample, it is obvious that there are hard drives on public sale that still contain highly confidential material."