Within the framework of a practice that many experts would describe as “killing a fly with a nuclear bomb”, it was found that many of the world’s largest technology companies destroy thousands of storage devices each year in order to remain compliant with data protection regulations.
Instead of risking data leaks, both Amazon and Microsoft (two of the world’s largest data center operators) prefer to physically destroy the contents of every data-bearing hardware they no longer plan to use, rather than simply delete and sell them.
“If we let a piece of data leak, we lose the trust of our customers,” an Amazon employee explains, but Amazon has declined to make an official comment on the matter.
Is wiping and selling discs that dangerous?
Big data operators are not the only ones making this application. Public sector organizations, various ministries, police departments and many other private companies prefer physical destruction of hardware for the same reasons.
Formatting and selling discs is risky because data can eventually be recovered and can contain highly sensitive and valuable content. An example of this happened last month at Morgan Stanley. It was determined that the company sold the discs in the second-hand market even though they still had recoverable data on them, instead of destroying them. The US Department of Security fined Morgan Stanley $35 million.
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