EDITOR’S QUESTION
WHAT BEST PRACTICE APPROACH
SHOULD DATA CENTRE MANAGERS TAKE
TO MANAGING OUTDATED EQUIPMENT?
ew research launched
by Blancco Technology
Group, a leader in data
erasure and mobile
device diagnostics, has
outlined the staggering
cost to global organisations of old,
outdated IT equipment cluttering up
data centres. This is primarily the risk of sensitive
data that is stored on old IT hardware of
being breached or misused. Put simply,
organisations are opting to spend vast
sums of money storing these devices,
contrary in many cases, to data protection
laws and regulations, rather than
entrusting them to data erasure experts
for wiping before reuse.
A survey of 600 data centre experts
from APAC, Europe and North America
reveals that two in five organisations
that store their data in-house spend
more than US$100,000 storing useless
IT hardware that could pose a security or
compliance risk. “Global organisations are unnecessarily
wasting vast sums of money from non-
compliance and onsite storage fees –
charges that could be easily mitigated,”
said Fredrik Forslund, Vice President,
Enterprise and Cloud Erasure Solutions
at Blancco.
Astonishingly, more than half of these
companies (54%) have been cited at
least once or twice by regulators or
governing bodies for noncompliance with
international data protection laws. “This points to a huge lack of education
within the sector about what to do with
hardware that is faulty or has reached
end-of-life. Organisations are letting this
hardware pile up in fear of data leakage,
resulting in loss of efficiency, increasing
capital costs, possible noncompliance and
potential security risks.”
N
Fines of up to US$1.5 million could be issued
for HIPAA violations due to storing data
past its retention date, with that number
multiplied by the number of years each
violation has been allowed to persist.
Blancco’s exclusive study, The High Cost
of Cluttered Data Centers, produced in
partnership with Coleman Parks, reflects
the extent to which global organisations are
paralysed by fear of reputational damage.
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
The global data centre industry remains
gripped by a lack of time and resources
to complete comprehensive data privacy
processes. This remains one of the key
reasons why organisations, particularly
those that own their own data centres and
store all data onsite, are keeping IT assets
past their useful lives.
Issue 02
29