Does your company store valuable proprietary information on your hard drives? Many businesses keep important data, including client records, research materials, and more, on their office devices.
Failure to follow proper data destruction protocols can put your proprietary information at risk. At ITECH Recycling, we work closely with businesses to ensure their valuable data is secure. Here’s what you need to know.
Why Should You Protect Your Proprietary Information? Proprietary information is any data unique to your company. This may include:
- Legal, creative, or financial work done on behalf of a client.
- Trade secrets, including research and development, product specifications, formulas, and more.
- Internal information related to your company, including financial data, salaries, employee records, marketing strategies, and client contracts.
You and your employees work hard to create proprietary information. It could be harmful to your company if one of your competitors gets their hands on it.
How Long Should You Keep Proprietary Information? There is no one-size-fits-all rule for maintaining proprietary information on your hard drives. The decision to keep proprietary information may include:
- Regulatory requirements. For example, you may be required to destroy your customers’ financial information under FACTA regulations.
- Utility. If you are using the proprietary information on an ongoing basis, then you can’t destroy it. You must retain it somewhere.
- Security. Sometimes, holding onto proprietary information past its usefulness can put your company at risk.
Many companies aren’t sure what to do with their proprietary information and trade secrets. As a result, they maintain the information on their hard drives indefinitely.
However, holding onto information indefinitely could potentially be harmful to your business. For example, what if you had proprietary information that you were no longer actively using, but access to it could allow a competitor to gain an advantage over you? Keeping it might make it accessible to employees who shouldn’t have it or to vendors and suppliers.
The Benefits of Proper Data Destruction Instead of keeping your proprietary information indefinitely, your best bet is to partner with an experienced data destruction specialist. ITECH Recycling offers expert data destruction services.
Paying for proper data destruction can help you in the following ways:
- It can save you the time and stress of attempting to destroy data yourself.
- It can give you peace of mind knowing that your proprietary information has been properly destroyed and will not be accessible to unauthorized persons.
- It can save you money because storing defunct hard drives takes up valuable office space that could be used for other purposes.
- You’ll have proof that your proprietary information has been destroyed if needed for regulatory purposes.
- It can help you avoid fines for regulatory infractions.
- In addition to protecting you, it protects your customers and your employees.
Proper data destruction is key to securing your valuable information. Partnering with a data destruction company ensures that you dispose of it correctly.
Need help with secure data destruction? Learn more about ITECH Recycling’s data destruction and computers recycling service in Bolingbrook.