May 2023 Tech Upload
Why Physical Drive Destruction is Often the Best Option
Trying to understand what you should do with your old hard drives to ensure the proper destruction of data. There are a few data destruction methods that are used by professional services, and ultimately, the best method to use may depend on your situation, but find out why physical drive destruction is often the best option.
How Does Physical Destruction Work?
Do you want to know what physical destruction looks like for your hard drives? Imagine a wood chipper, but instead of wood, this wood chipper can tear right through metal, and it destroys the drive with some level of precision too ensuring that no piece large enough to have recoverable data on it will survive.
This machine is about the size of a compact car and it has a two small slots on the top for hard drives to fit into. One of the slots is for HDDs and one for SSDs ensuring that each goes through a shredding process that is optimized for them. This leaves no chance for error as the drives enter the shredding mechanism in the proper orientation every time. The machine is loud, but as it eats your drive, it spits out hunks of metal onto a little conveyor belt, and then it’s off to be recycled.
What Happens to Material from Physically Destroyed Hard Drives?
A physically destroyed drive is reduced to just a few pieces of metal, electronic material, and plastic. After destruction, these materials are sorted and recycled appropriately just like any other electronic that would enter our facility.
What Drives is Physical Destruction Ideal For?
Hard drive destruction machines are custom made for HDDs and SSDs. This means that essentially all drives are suited for physical destruction except for data storage mediums that don’t fall into those two categories such as CDs, DVDs, thumb drives, floppy disks, etc. There are other methods of data destruction that can appropriately deal with those types of data devices.
Ultimately, if you don’t want to reuse your old drive or if you don’t want to attempt to sell it after a professional data overwrite, you should choose physical destruction for your data storage devices.
Gets Rid of Outdated Technology
How many hard disk drives or HDDs do you have sitting around? These drives are slow, clunky, and at this point in their lifecycle as the faster, lighter and more compact solid state drives or SSDs have taken over the market. This is especially true in the laptop space. Choosing physical destruction is your way to get rid of those old drives and clear the way for upgrades to SSDs.
3 Ways You Can Reduce Your E-Waste as a Company: The Three R's of Waste Management
It may seem overused but even in reducing your e-waste, the three R’s of waste management still apply. We know you’ve heard them in grade school or on children’s television before but it comes down to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Have you actually thought about what those three words mean though? Notice that recycling is the last step. We’re going to dive into each term and specifically how they relate to reducing your e-waste.
Reduce Your E-Waste Production
Obviously, reducing e-waste is the end goal, but there’s something you can do early on in the e-waste stream to reduce the amount of e-waste your company produces. E-waste begins at the moment of purchase. Every electronic you buy, you are eventually going to throw away.
This means reducing comes down to two factors, buying only what you need, and buying products that last. Don’t buy 20 laptops when you only need 10. Yes, you may be planning for growth, but waiting is almost always better. For one, the tech may be better or cheaper when you are ready to buy and you’re not tying up your budget needlessly and early.
You also want to think about the longevity of the products you are buying. It’s better to spend more on a laptop that will likely last you 6 years rather than 3. This saves you from buying an additional laptop, and it also prevents one more from becoming waste.
Reuse Your Old Electronics
When you decide to no longer use an electronic, first consider if it has another use case. Perhaps a laptop that is no longer up for the job in one field may still be suitable for another. Maybe old Wi-Fi equipment can be repurposed as the guest Wi-Fi that clients have requested in the past.
There’s also the option to sell your electronics on a secondary market. Either way, if the equipment has data of any kind you will want to make sure that this data is professionally destroyed.
Recycle Your E-Waste
Once you have reduced what you buy and committed to reusing—or even selling—where you can, then you are ready to recycle what’s left and this is just as important as the other two steps.
Recycling is the end of the road for your electronics, and you want to make sure that you do it the right way. That means you aren’t just throwing it out, you aren’t letting it sit and accumulate, and you certainly aren’t just throwing it in your recycling bins and hoping for the best.
Ultimately, you have to work with a professional e-recycling service where they can contractually own 100% of the liability and ensure that your electronics are recycled responsibly and effectively. That also means all your sensitive data will be safely destroyed reducing your risk of a data breach.
The Intrigue of Cybersecurity
April 24, 2023
By: Daley-Hinkens, Carmelyn M
Cybersecurity Specialist program creates ‘turnkey’ graduates
It involves mystery. Fascination. And a healthy dose of suspicion.
Those are just a few of the qualities that have attracted students Kim Hinson and Bhuwan Tiwari to Cybersecurity at Fox Valley Technical College.
Kim will graduate in May with a Cybersecurity Specialist associate degree. Her previous career was in cosmetology but while doing some soul-searching during the COVID-19 pandemic she decided to start a new career.
“Honestly, what drew me to the program was the concept of hacking,” Kim offers. “By that, I mean the ethical way of being a hacker and doing it for the good of other people.”
For Bhuwan, he wants to incorporate Cybersecurity courses into his learning while he pursues Software Developer and Web Development & Design Specialist associate degrees.
“I am fascinated with cybersecurity because as a developer, I’m writing code that could affect millions of lives and I have to be aware of vulnerabilities,” Bhuwan explains. “I need to think about how someone could breach the program as I’m writing it.”
The Top 10 Reasons Training Helps With Employee Retention
Employee retention is a crucial aspect of any successful business. Losing valuable employees can be costly, both in terms of time and money. One effective way to improve employee retention is through training and development programs.
Training and development programs can play a significant role in improving employee retention. By increasing job satisfaction, improving skills and knowledge, providing opportunities for career advancement, increasing engagement, enhancing confidence, improving communication, fostering innovation, improving performance management, improving customer service, and providing a competitive advantage, training can help companies retain their valuable employees. To make the most of training and development programs, companies should ensure that they are aligned with business goals and that they are relevant, engaging, and effective.
May IT Roundtable
Business Value for Blockchain Technology Applications
Join us for a roundtable discussion to increase your knowledge of Blockchain Technology. We will discuss what blockchain technology is and how it can be an excellent tool for your business. Topics of this roundtable will include:
- Discuss how this technology could impact supply chains and business transactions
- Understand how blockchain can work with marketing
- Interact with other business professionals with an interest in blockchain’s value
- See blockchain-based platforms being presented in the food industry
- Look at an existing Walmart freight reconciliation application
Come prepared to chat and interact with peers during this brown-bag style discussion.
NEWDA Investor Mentorship Program
Now accepting 2nd cohort mentors and mentees
Become a mentor or mentee
Learn more about what makes a good mentor or mentee and other details about the program the Investor Mentorship Program webpage. We are looking for both mentors and mentees for the 2nd cohort. If you are interested in becoming a mentor or mentee, reach out to Jack Brown at jack_brown@secura.net to apply or learn more.
Regional News
10th Annual Data Intelligence Symposium
The 10th annual AE Business Solutions Data Intelligence Symposium brings together industry experts and professionals to discuss the latest challenges and solutions in the Data Intelligence field. We’re increasingly surrounded with data, models, algorithms, and an analytics marketplace full of vendors making claims about algorithms/AI. At this year’s symposium we will endeavor to answer a few of the fields most burning questions, including how to identify when a claim is valid or flawed, finding the truth in the data, and how to use human intelligence to interpret data in an increasingly AI centric world.
100 (Free) AI Courses
Some of the biggest changes – and opportunities – today are being driven by artificial intelligence (AI). We know how important building AI-related skills will be to navigating virtually every role and industry, whether you’re an everyday professional in fields like marketing or sales or a seasoned developer. That’s why we’re making over one hundred AI courses free through June 15, 2023 to help you succeed in your job and career.
Course topics include:
- Generative AI
- AI & Machine Learning (ML) Foundations
- Responsible AI
- Advanced AI
- Applied AI
Courses are offered in multiple languages. Check out all of the course topics and highlights: 100 FREE AI Courses.
Exporting: Grow Beyond Wisconsin
Interested in learning more about how to grow your business beyond Wisconsin? Join experts with knowledge and resources to help you export your product or service! Two locations & Times on Thursday, May 11.
Navigating Economic and Cybersecurity Threats in 2023
Mar 6, 2023
By: Larry Scherzer
In today’s economic climate, some business leaders may feel pressure to reduce costs. From capital to operating expenses, C-level executives drill down deeper into their balance sheets for possible cuts.
For many businesses, cybersecurity can be a significant expense that comes up for review often, even when there is no threat of a recession. While cybersecurity can be expensive, the cost pales in comparison to a data breach – no matter the size of the company. In 2022, the global average cost per data breach increased by over two percent, amounting to $4.35 million.