A fifth of secondhand PCs finding their way onto the
resale market still contain sensitive data on their hard
discs.
Research by BT, the University of Glamorgan in Wales and Edith
Cowan University in Australia, has found that while 41% of the
disks were unreadable, 20% contained sufficient information to
identify individuals.
The research, based on the acquisition of 300 PCs from auctions,
computer fairs and on-line purchases, also found that 5% of the
machines held commercial information on organisations, and that 5%
held “illicit data”.
Some of the information contained on the disks included payroll
information, mobile telephone numbers, copies of invoices, employee
names and photos, IP addresses, network information, illicit audio
and video files, and financial details including bank and credit
card accounts.
This is the second year running the research has been conducted.
The researchers say, that while the results show that there has
been an improvement in the number of owners properly erasing data,
a large number of the discs examined still contained significant
volumes of sensitive information.
Despite widening security awareness, more regulations and
significant publicity, organisations are still not modifying their
procedures to ensure that information is effectively removed before
computer discs are disposed of, said the researchers.
Dr Andy Jones, BT head of security technology research, said,
“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.”
The PCs examined were obtained in the UK, Australia, North
America and Germany.
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