Secure and cost-effective disk eradication
If you were to categorize industries on a scale of one to 10 by the virulence of their data growth, the banking industry would probably rate as an 11. Why? In addition to their massive organic growth that results from innovation in how they interact with their customers comes the industry’s long-term consolidation trend.
One such bank is a multi-national giant experiencing disk data growth well in excess of 50 percent annually. Coupled with multiple layers of consolidation common to the banking industry, they have experienced more than their fair share of data management challenges.
Ironically, the very growth of data also leads to a growing requirement to destroy data as well. Though more reliable than ever before, disk drives still fail on occasion. The law of sheer numbers at the bank suggests that many hundreds of drives will fail in the course of a year.
In order to meet their compliance obligations, the bank has historically physically destroyed disk drives, on site. The costs associated with this process are several.
- While no longer in service, these drives retain some economic value. By destroying drives rather than returning them to the manufacturer they can incur a cost in excess of $1,000 per disk because they have to “buy” those useless disks
- They continue to incur maintenance expense for the “extra” disks on their floor
- They must pay a third party to destroy and then safely dispose of the useless devices
The cost of destroying disks was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and growing at a rate equivalent to their disk data growth overall.
PeakData proposed a solution that is expected to save the bank several times what they would otherwise have spent over the next two years. The sticking point, of course, was that while they could save a considerable amount of money by returning the disks, the disks still had sensitive data on them.
PeakData delivered a secure data eradication process that guarantees compliance and returns the disks to the manufacturer before their economic value expires.
The PeakData production team visits their data centers on a set schedule (in some cases as frequently as once per month) to efficiently eradicate data to Department of Defense standards and recapture substantial economic value. By returning many of these drives to service rather than to landfills, the Earth benefits as well.