This editorial was originally published on Jan 17, 2007. It is being republished as Steve is on vacation. 

Now this could be fun. Just imagine your boss comes to your cube with an electric drill, a sledgehammer, and a circular saw. Oh, and don't forget the safety glasses. You've got work to do.

That's what is happening in some IT shops as old data drives need to be destroyed with no hope of the data being recovered. I saw this article on data demolition and thought that might actually be a fun afternoon at work. Destroy some old data drives, ending their usefulness like the fax machine in "Office Space" 🙂

Data security is becoming a bigger issue all the time in the corporate world. And as more companies store more and more data on disk, the issues with disposal must be dealt with by more and more IT groups.

I guess you could hire a firm and get this before and after picture:

but I'd think that defeats the purpose somehow. It's the physical access outside your company that can be the problem. Going to a vendor specializing in destruction could be a problem since it gives criminals a single source (or a smaller source) or vendors they can bribe to get critical data. Better off letting different people in your company destroy the data at random intervals. That way no one can predict where and when the data will be destroyed.

Plus it would be fun 🙂