By Christie Sylvara
If you are destroying hard drives that you’ve used in your home or at your company, you’re already on the path to securing your data when it’s at the end of its use to you. This is a step in the right direction. But do you know anything about the credentials or process of the vendor that’s destroying your hard drives? Should you be looking to your paper shredding service to perform this function for you? Here’s how to know if you can trust your hard drive destruction to your paper shredding service.
- Are they a certified member of NAID?
NAID ®, a division of the International Secure Information Governance and Management Association ™ (i-SIGMA™), is the standards setting body for the information destruction industry. NAID’s mission is to promote the information destruction industry and the standards and ethics of its member companies.
- Do they hold the right endorsements for the type of service you’re looking to have done?
Simply because your paper shredder is a NAID Member doesn’t mean they’re NAID certified. The NAID AAA Certification is a voluntary program for NAID members that provide information destruction services. Through the program, NAID members are audited and endorsed to perform one or all of the following services; mobile and/or plant-based destruction of paper or printed media, micro-media, computer hard drive destruction, and/ or computer hard drive sanitization. Keep in mind it is possible for a NAID certified provider to be endorsed for mobile paper destruction, but not for micro-media or hard drive destruction services. Furthermore, these endorsements can change from year to year. Want to know more? Click here to learn how to keep up to date with your vendor’s NAID Certification and endorsements status.
- It’s easy to do business with a vendor you know.
If your secure paper shredding service is NAID certified and endorsed, they’re likely already at your location picking up your documents to destroy. Therefore, notifying them that you have hard drives needing secure destruction should be easy. You’ll be saving yourself an extra trip to another vendor, another invoice to process, and an additional research project to locate the right partner to securely destroy your hard drives.
Chances are, your paper shredding service can securely destroy more than just your paper. However, it IS possible that your document destruction provider is NAID certified to securely destroy your paper but not your hard drives. There’s one way to find out though, ask!