You’re going to learn how to save your company thousands of dollars on waste pickup by using a baling machine. 

The best part about this article is that I’m pulling together real data to show you how people are losing money in their businesses.

Keep reading if you want to see what the potential cost savings could be for your business.

So… What’s The Problem With Waste Removal Companies?

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re paying an arm and a leg to get your material hauled.

In most circumstances, a large company will charge you a much larger amount than a smaller company.

Even if you do business with a smaller company, they are most likely profiting more than you think they are for taking care of your waste.

The truth is that your waste is valuable, and the haulers are usually profiting off of removing your waste and selling it.

Not only are they profiting from every pickup, but they do so on a weekly or monthly basis.

As time goes by, so many companies allow money to evaporate away without realizing the value which they are missing.

Why Don’t More People Recycle Their Waste?

In the chart above, you can see one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb!

In the United States, most of our waste is going to a landfill rather than getting recycled.

Part of this problem is due to the mindset of “getting rid of our trash.”

When waste is looked at as something that we want to get rid of, the value is ignored.

Here lies a tremendous opportunity for you to create cash savings and save the Earth at the same time.

How Does A Baler Fit Into Waste Removal?

A baler will decrease the cost of your waste immediately because you’re commoditizing what you would otherwise be seen as garbage.

What Are The Cost Savings For My Business?

Cardboard balers are ideal for a couple of different business models.

Model #1: Low Volume Of Material Per Location – with a Centralized Consolidation Point

Model #2: High Volume Of Material Collected In One Location

Let’s use the example above to visualize what the cost savings would look like over a 10 year period of time:

This example shows what you can save with the minimum necessary volume.

You can see that the yearly savings are enough to pay for an employees’ salary!

But… what if you have double the volume for the location?

You’d be saving $50,800 instead.

Well… what if you manage 10 locations that need balers?

You’d have a 10-year cost saving of approximately $254,000 to $508,000.00.

How Is It Possible To Save Money Immediately?

From the graphic above, you could see that it could take a year or two for a cardboard baler to pay for itself.

The truth is that if you want it to save you money right off the bat, an HSM V-Press 820 Plus can be financed for only $353.00 per month.

With financing, it’s possible to lessen the load financially for the first few years and have pure savings for 5+ more years.

We hope that we have answered the question, “How much is a bale of cardboard worth?” and how much a cardboard baler could save your company.

Tips And Tools For Turning Cardboard Into Cash

In this article, we showed you a few examples of what you could expect to save or earn with a cardboard baler.

Here are 3 calculators that Zoe Liang at Whitaker Brothers has created that can help you predict your cost savings with a cardboard baler:

How Much Is A Bale Of Cardboard Worth: Revenue Calculator

HSM V-Press 860 Baler ROI Calculator

HSM V-Press 860 Plus B ROI Calculator

If you want to talk to an expert rather than do the math, go ahead and contact us here to get an estimate of what a cardboard baler could save you.

The post How Much Is A Bale Of Cardboard Worth? appeared first on Whitaker Brothers Business Machines.

Medical Document Shredding – What You Need To Know

Medical document shredding can be an expensive and risky venture if mishandled.

In this article, I’m going to give you the real data that shows you how to save money with medical shredding.

With HIPAA HITECH regulations and hospital capacities reaching record highs, security is getting stretched to its limits.

There are 3 important things that I want you to consider when finding a solution for document shredding. Don’t run to a shredding truck company or buy a ton of locked document bins to store documents that have PHI.

• Turning to an outside provider for shred services will cost more due to HITECH regulations.
• Shred services don’t guarantee shredding documents to the required level of security.
• Increased patient capacity has increased patient paperwork causing document overflow.

How To Save Money With Medical Paper Shredding

Shredding medical documents in-house can save you money in outside services while not burdening internal labor costs.

Let’s talk about the savings in outside spend first.

Shredding paper in-house saves companies an average of 20%-40% of the cost for a shredding service in the first year.

What’s worth mentioning is that after the first year, the costs are virtually nonexistent.

Shredders very reliable machines and have a long lifespan so there is a low amount of concern over the machine dying on you anytime soon.

Newer models also save money on energy consumption which is another aspect of the purchase to consider.

As mentioned in the beginning of this section, it is possible to save labor time with the centralized shredding method.

HIPAA Data Destruction Requirements

HIPAA requires that you handle patients personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) with extreme care.

The last thing that you want is for your hospital to get a reputation of identity theft and data breaches.

We will cover two different media that contain patient information, and how you can maintain the security of patient records.

Required Destruction Of Paper

What is safe document disposal in the eyes of HIPAA?

Anything that renders documents, “unreadable, indecipherable, and otherwise impossible to reconstruct.”

The best way to do this with paper is by using a Level 3 P4 cross-cut paper shredder to turn the paper into the size of very fine confetti.

The typical shredder that spits out long strips of paper is easy to reconstruct, and would not be a safe option for (PII) or (PHI).

Required Destruction Of Computer Hardware Storage

It is also recommended that hardware such as a hard drive or solid-state drive is wiped or purged.

Different methods include software, hard drive crushers, hard drive shredders, and degaussers to magnetically remove all data.

Healthcare Provider Secure Disposal

Shredding paper in-house extinguishes opportunities for actual security breaches.

No matter what security measure you put into play, what actually matters is the rate of success that the procedure produces.

Why do you need an end-to-end solution?

Shred services can allow paper to get backed up in the system.

If you’re experiencing a higher volume or bulk amount of documents that need disposal, the last thing you want to do is have an overflow problem.

If you leave paper sitting out rather than storing it safely, you open yourself up to document theft and legal liability.

Medical Document Shredding Solutions

When it comes to in-house shredding, there are 2 systems that are effective in taking proactive security measures.

1. Centralized Shredding 

Centralized shredding utilizes locked bins for paper storage. The paper is then taken to an industrial shredding machine for destruction. The positive outcome of this approach is that the paper easily converts to recycled material and you can help utilize sanitation workers’ jobs in the hospital.

2. Decentralized Shredding

Decentralized shredding takes care of the shredding at the source. Shredders go in every office that requires a shredder. The positive outcome of this approach is that documents meet the end of their life as soon as they are no longer needed. This method is the best for security.

What Are The Best Shredders For Medical Documents Under HIPAA?

The shredders that are best for meeting HIPAA standards include everything from your standard office shredder to an industrial shredder.

For centralized shredding, you need:

• Document Disposal Bins
• Industrial Crosscut Shredder

For decentralized shredding, you need:

• Crosscut Lvl. 3 Office Shredders

The post Medical Document Shredding appeared first on Whitaker Brothers Business Machines.

There are a few different options to look at when you’re choosing a degausser for your organization. 

This article will go over the security level that you may need, portability, and budget options.

Degausser Security Levels

If you are working for the federal government, then there’s a good chance that you may need to purchase a degausser with the consideration that you need to maintain compliance with top-secret security procedures.

In this case, you would need to purchase an NSA-listed degausser.

NSA-listed degaussers are special in the way that they have a very strong gauss charge that has more than enough strength to wipe away magnetically stored data on a hard drive.

As a general rule with degaussers, the higher the oersted-level of the hard drive, the more degausser power you will need.

Typically, drives with a large amount of data or larger enterprise drives will have a higher oersted level and need a stronger degauss charge to be capable of erasing the data on the hard drive.

If you are a commercial entity, then you won’t have to worry about buying an NSA-listed degausser for compliance reasons.

Whitaker Brothers offers both degaussers for commercial use and NSA-listed degaussers.

What Are The Most Portable Degaussers?

Most hard drive degaussers are about the size of a toaster oven, so they are already quite portable as far as data destruction machinery goes.

There are a few degaussers that stand out in this category though.

The first is the degausser wand.

Degausser wands are less than half a foot in length and don’t require electricity to run.

There is one hang-up with degausser wands though.

With degausser wands, you must remove the casing off of the hard drive and you have to remove the hard drive platters to physically wipe the data off of the hard drives with the magnetic degaussing wand.

If this process doesn’t sound like it’s for you but you still need a portable degausser, then Whitaker Brothers sells one that’s about the size of a toaster here.

Budget-Friendly Degaussing Options

As mentioned above, a degausser wand is the cheapest option for degaussers.

The Proton 1100 Degaussing Wand is also and NSA-listed degausser as well.

If you don’t want to go through the process of taking apart a hard drive every time that you want to destroy data on a hard drive, then you’re going to need a degausser machine.

Our most affordable degaussing machine is the Dataxstroyer 105 Hard Drive Drawer Degausser.

This machine will offer 20 times the convenience that a degausser wand has in terms of time and process saving.

Here is another good question that we get…

But, what if I don’t want to spend $5,000.00 on a degausser?

The best solution for you is to rent a degausser on an as-needed basis.

Renting a degausser can be a good solution if you get rid of your hard drives once a year.

It isn’t as procedurally secure as erasing drives on an ongoing basis, but from a compliance standpoint, if you’re degaussing, you’re doing due diligence on your part.

You can check out the degaussers that are available for rental on our site here.

Do You Have Any Questions About What Type Of Degausser You Need?

This article covers the general options that are out there for purchasing a degausser, however, we know that you may want to speak with someone to confirm that you’re making the right investment. 

Call us at 800-243-9226 or contact us here if you have any questions. 

We have experts that are ready to help out with any use-case or concern.

The post How To Choose A Degausser appeared first on Whitaker Brothers Business Machines.

Degaussing is the process of demagnetizing a magnetic field.

Common uses for degaussing include erasing data from Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), VHS tapes, LTO tapes, DLT tapes, reel-to-reel tapes, and cassettes.

Degaussing is also used to remove discoloration from older CRT color TV monitors and on battleships.

In fact, degaussing played an important role in World War II when British ships encountered German magnetic naval mines. 

Magnetic mines were able to detect that a ship was overhead because of the magnetic field that the steel ships produce.

Thanks to degaussing coils, ships were protected by 1943. 

How Is Degaussing Measured?

In the case of degaussing magnetic media such as tapes and hard drives, there are two units of measurement to keep in mind.

The unit of measurement that describes the power of the Gauss field is a Gauss unit.

Magnetic fields or objects that emanate a magnetic field measured in Oersted units.

Oersted units are often abbreviated to “Oe” when referencing a magnetic field.

How Does A Degausser Machine Work?

A degausser machine is a machine that safely disrupts the magnetic field stored on tapes or hard drives. 

Degausser machines contain a coil that sends an electromagnetic pulse through the magnetic media.

Once the EMP goes through the hard drive, the data becomes irrecoverable.

Degausser machines aren’t the only way to degauss magnetic media.

Degausser wands disrupt the magnetic field that is on a hard drive platter.

A degausser wand is simply a neodymium magnet that has a strong enough magnetic field to disrupt data on media storage units.

Using Degaussers For Hard Drives

Hard drive platters are disks that contain stored data within the hard drive.

The platters have a coating of iron dioxide or chromium dioxide. 

Hard drives use pulses of electrical energy to write patterns of data on the platters.

The electrical pulses translate into binary code (a series of 1’s and 0’s) that can represent all types of media/info.

Electromagnetic pulses totally disrupt the data on the hard drive platters

After degaussing, it’s impossible to write or wipe data from the hard drive.

There are several different types of degaussers on the market with a variety of capacities.

Commercial-level degaussers meet the minimum required energy output to wipe a hard drive.

NSA listed degaussers typically have a much greater Gauss output than commercial units.

This is because of the need to guarantee that there would never be a trace of confidential information breached.

The larger the hard drives storage capacity, the more Oe units the hard drive has.

When deciding which hard drive degausser is best for your application, it is important to know the Oe level of the hard drives. 

Your degausser has the capability of creating a Gauss pulse that can fully disrupt the hard drive platters based on the Gauss units and Oe level of the drives.

Over the years, the amount of coercivity of hard drives has increased, creating the need for a powerful future-proof degausser.

Here is one of our legacy articles on the future of Degausser Requirements.

>>>You can find hard drive degaussers here<<<

Using Degaussers For Tapes

In the instance of magnetic tape media, there is a metal oxide powder that adheres to the film.

Tape recorders create a magnetic field that arranges the position of the iron oxide that is contained on the film.

Tape recorders read the iron oxide to turn the data into audio, video, or other forms of data.

Degaussing a magnetic tape disrupts the iron oxide on the tape.

Degaussing a tape makes data completely unrecoverable.

To find the right size degausser for wiping data from tapes, go here to find a tape degausser.

Can A Degausser Destroy A Solid State Drive?

The short answer is no.

Solid-state drives are not a form of magnetic media, so they can’t be erased similar to a hard drive.

The best way to destroy the data on a solid-state drive is to fracture or shred the solid-state drive in as many ways as possible.

Solid-state crushers and SSD shredders are useful for that.

What Do You Do After Your Hard Drives Have Been Degaussed?

After you degauss a hard drive, the appearance of the hard drive doesn’t change at all.

The simplest method for keeping track of erased drives is to just label every hard drive after you degauss it.

While this method helps you keep track of every individual hard drives’ erasure, it still leaves the gap of keeping a real record of destroyed hard drives.

If your organization is security-aware or has to maintain security compliance regulations and survive audits, then it is good to invest in hard drive destruction tracking software.

If you have a simple-scan system that automatically enters the hard drives barcode into a tracking system, you get complete visibility into the history of your data erasure practices.

The Proton Datadefender Tracking System

The Proton Datadefender ATS Automatic Tracking System is able to:

• Scan hard drives after they’ve been degaussed or physically damaged.
• Logs the hard drive serial numbers into a report.
• Records the time, date, operator, and erasure status of the hard drives.

Do You Want to Learn More About Degaussing?

• Visit Our Blog 
• Check Out Our Degausser Page 
• Contact An Expert For More Information

The post Degaussing: How Does It Work? appeared first on Whitaker Brothers Business Machines.

There is another piece of office equipment that people seem to be forgetting about or don’t even know about that also has opened up a dangerous hole in data security. 

Most copy machines have been installed with hard drives and users have no idea that whatever they make a copy of can be stored there and be retrieved by anyone. 

Every time you use a copier machine you should know that it comes with the responsibility of keeping your data secure. 

In some cases, you may run personal information through a machine when you bill a client or for internal documents.  

When you get to the level of medical or financial records you’re talking about people’s social security numbers and other forms of data that can lead to identity theft.

Page by page, your important forms and documents are getting stored on a hard drive year after year.

In recent years, a CBS News investigation uncovered a warehouse in New Jersey, where people can buy copiers for a large discount.

Many of the copy machines in the warehouse were packed with thousands of digital impressions of sensitive documents including police sex crime reports, pay stubs with social security numbers, and medical records.

I know that you’re probably wondering how easy it is to remove a hard drive from a copier!

Pretty much anyone who knows how to use a screwdriver can easily remove a copier’s hard drive in minutes.

It’s not uncommon for there to be up to 20,000 documents on a copier, so the cost to a company that has a data breach related to one of these hard drives could be astronomical.

Responsible companies will erase hard drives before reselling copying machines.

Simply erasing a hard drive and keeping the same hard drive in the machine could pose security risks.

If your company or organization has data that is top secret/sensitive information or data that contains (PII), it is very important to make sure that the hard drives are erased and replaced before the copier is sold to another business.

Degauss And Destroy Your Hard Drives

The best way to ensure that sensitive information that has gone through your copier is to degauss and destroy your hard drives.

What Does Degauss Mean?

Degauss or Degaussing is the process of demagnetizing an object. 

In this sense, it would be the hard drive that gets degaussed or demagnetized.

The reason that you need to demagnetize your hard drive is that all of your data is saved in the magnetic field of the hard drive platters.

Even if you delete files or use a program to erase or overwrite files, your data is still retrievable.

What Kind Of Degaussing Machine Or Degausser Should I Use To Erase Hard Drive Data?

Hard drive degaussers come in a few shapes and sizes.

There are degaussing wands that are handheld tools that demagnetize HDD’s to erase them.

There are also degaussing machines that you can drop a hard drive into, push a button, and wipe a hard drive in seconds.

If you want to find a degausser to meet your needs, you can take a look here.

Some Last Points…

Any machine that contains a hard drive should have the hard drive erased and replaced before that machine is resold to another person or organization.

Copy machines often contain every type of sensitive information such as banking information, social security numbers, medical records, and trade secrets.

If you haven’t assessed the security risks in your business, then it might be time to use a security checklist to make sure that a data breach won’t happen to you.

The post Could Your Copy Machine’s Hard Drive Be The Source Of A Potential Data Breach? appeared first on Whitaker Brothers Business Machines.

This emphasis on data collection has led to businesses gaining unprecedented value in consumer insights. 

However, recent concerns have arisen that people’s private information may be exposed or misused by companies.

A recent example that amplifies these worries is Facebook’s numerous instances of irresponsible data management exposed in 2018. 

Keeping consumers’ private information protected is becoming a major ethical issue as more businesses use private data for decision making. 

For this reason, data protection compliance acts are being introduced in different industries to ensure that businesses use private data responsibly.

The General Data Protection Regulation

One noteworthy regulation implemented in 2018 is the GDPR, which will have implications for businesses across all industries. 

The GDPR requires that data collectors and controllers take appropriate measures to safeguard the personal information of European citizens. 

These guidelines expand the rights of data subjects (individuals whose data is being collected) over their personal data and provide more specific conditions for obtaining consent from data subjects. 

They also require companies to process data responsibly and transparently and through a procedure that is easily expressed and visible.

The expansion of the rights of data subjects is an important policy addition by the GDPR. These new rights include the right to be forgotten, the right to access, and breach notification.

1.   The right to be forgotten entitles data subjects to have their personal data erased by the data controller and other third-parties. This occurs when the individual withdraws their consent or when the original purpose for the data is no longer applicable.
2.   The right to access requires data controllers to provide transparency into how and why data subjects’ private data is being processed.
3.   The breach notification right forces companies to inform their data subjects when their private data is endangered by a data breach.

The private data protected by the GDPR includes:

•     Basic personal information such as name, address, and ID numbers.
•     Web data such as location, IP address, and cookie data.
•     Political ideology, sexual orientation, and ethnic or racial data.

What if my company is considered noncompliant?

The GDPR quantifies the consequence of failing to meet data privacy standards. 

The maximum penalty for noncompliance is 4% company revenue or 20 million euros (whichever is greater). 

Obviously, businesses such as your own will want to take measures necessary to avoid being hit by such a considerable fine for noncompliance. 

What may not be as clear is what steps to take to ensure that your company is handling data responsibly and protecting the rights of their customers/data subjects.

How does my company become GDPR compliant?

The GDPR does not have a specific checklist of measures that a business must complete to maintain compliance. 

Rather, this policy implements an expectation that the business has satisfactory procedures that protect individuals throughout their data management process. 

To develop a quality understanding of what it takes for your business to be considered compliant, you must understand your business model and its interactions with data. 

A great start is creating a data map or Record of Processing Activities (RoPA) detailing each of your company’s data collecting sources.

This RoPA should show private data’s journey from initial collection to usage to disposal. 

This gives insights into which parts of your data management process are at risk or should be improved. 

Refining these issues should get you on track to becoming GDPR compliant.

Depending on how mature your business is, there are different ways to ensure your company is practicing GDPR compliance.

If your business is young, it is important to introduce suitable data administration measures during its development rather than adding them later. 

The privacy by design component of the GDPR requires this proactive approach to privacy protection, which will keep businesses responsible in early stages when they previously may have been more susceptible to errors.

On the other end, a well-developed business may be required to hire a data protection officer to maintain internal recordkeeping requirements. 

Data protection officers are required by the GDPR if your business practices systematic monitoring of private data on a large scale. 

These officers are present to give the company expert knowledge about data protection laws and practices, reporting directly to the highest level of management. 

This will help businesses stay proactive and preventative about data security issues that may arise down the line.

Hard drive degaussers: a proactive solution

The GDPR’s policies demand a preemptive approach with data management, preferring companies that avoid data troubles rather than repair them.

One way to be proactive about data security is to limit the number of copies or locations where the data is available. 

This will decrease the chances that the information gets exposed or discovered by the wrong person. 

This can be done by disposing of private data that no longer has use for your business. 

Allowing useless personal data to collect dust on your hard drives or servers not only clutters your data systems but imposes a risk that may cost your company money.

If your company uses hard drives as a method of data storage, acquiring a hard drive degausser is essential for providing high security for your data subjects’ personal information. 

Hard drive degaussers are great tools for destroying unwanted data and can be used preventatively or to fulfill a data subject’s right to be forgotten established by the GDPR.

Data disposal is an important component of data security but is frequently overlooked. 

Improper disposal of files and data leaves information prone to being retraced and excavated by people with proper tools and expertise. 

For example, deleting files the conventional way often does not completely rid the information from hard drives. 

Degaussers deliver more secure deletions by disrupting the hard drive’s magnetic storage, making the information unreadable.

While hard drive degaussers may seem like an expensive purchase on the surface, the value a degausser brings by helping maintain GDPR compliance exceeds the cost. 

A high-security degausser purchased for a couple of thousand dollars will help your company avoid potentially millions of dollars in fines incurred from noncompliance. 

Practicing responsible data disposal methods is necessary to keep your company and its customers safe. 

Find an NSA listed degausser on the Whitaker Brothers online store now to provide more protection to your business and its private data.

The post Stay GDPR Compliant with a Degausser (Wipe Hard Drives) appeared first on Whitaker Brothers Business Machines.

Today, we’re going to review the top 3 best hard drive destroyers in 2020.

These devices range from portable destroyers to stationery office equipment.

We even gave you a price range of $500 to $16,000 to give you the flexibility you need in making a buying decision.

Proton 1100 Degaussing Wand

Check it out here: https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/degaussers/proton-1100-degaussing-wand

The Proton 1100 Degaussing Wand is the most portable and affordable NSA-listed degausser.

Even though it’s small, it packs a big punch!

This degausser is seriously strong but comes in at 5 inches in length.

As you can see in the picture above, the degaussing wand comes with a protective case that prevents the unit from demagnetizing things that are around it.

When I was demoing the unit, I couldn’t help but feel the need to put my credit cards and cell phone as far away from it as possible!!!

I know you’re probably wondering how the thing works…

It only takes 3 steps:

1. Remove the exterior metal casing from the hard drive and unscrew any parts that are blocking the hard drive platters.
2. Remove the hard drive platters.
3. Remove the degausser from its protective case and rub the degausser wand from the inside ring to the outer edges of the HDD platter.

Don’t forget to get the whole surface of the hard drive platters with the degausser wand when you’re in the process of wiping your drives.

Why do we love this degausser wand?

• It’s hard to beat its price at $515.

• It weighs less than a pound.

• The Proton 1100 is an NSA listed degausser.

• This model is handheld.

• Ultra usable and doesn’t need an electrical outlet.

Find it here: https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/degaussers/proton-1100-degaussing-wand

Like I mentioned in the bulleted list, it’s hard to beat this price ^^^^^^^^

Next, we’re going to move on to a machine that is a hybrid of sorts.

Datastroyer ACD-HS Automatic Hard Drive Crusher

The Datastroyer ACD-HS or as we like to call it, “The taco maker” (because it folds hard drives in the shape of a taco) is a beast of a hybrid machine.

What do I mean when I say, “hybrid machine”?

You can either crush hard drives with the push of a button or you can crush them with a manual hand crank.

The latter method could be useful if you are in the field and there is a lack of electricity to power the ACD-HS.

To put it in perspective, this machine could crush hard drives in the back of a humvee or in a chopper.

The versatility of the manual option makes this machine one of the most usable and reliable data security devices on the market.

The other element of this machine that makes it even more of a hybrid is that you can add an optional solid-state drive module to destroy SSD’s.

When you combine the ability to destroy HDD’s and SSD’s into one machine, you gain the ability to destroy data from any computer or laptop. 

Why do we love this hard drive crusher?

• It’s portable (has a handle at the top) and compact.

• The ACD-HS is NSA-listed for 2nd stage drive destruction.

• There is an electric/automatic setting as well as a manual crank for operation.

• You can crush hard drives in seconds and destroy solid-state drives with an SSD insert.

CLICK HERE TO SEE IT IN ACTION >>>>>

Learn more here: https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/datastroyer-acd-hs-automatic-hard-drive-crusher

Or 

TAKE A LOOK AT THE PRODUCT PAGE HERE>>>>>

Datastroyer 105 Hard Drive Degausser

Find Here: https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/datastroyer-105-hd-degausser

The Datastroyer 105 Hard Drive Degausser is a robust machine that guarantees quality and consistency.

This machine is the kind of machine that you can depend on for years to come.

I’m not just saying that because it rarely needs repair.

The 105 creates a 20,000 Gauss positive and Gauss negative field to demagnetize hard drives.

A field of 20,000 Gauss is more than enough to wipe any drive on the market today.

The 105 Degausser is a future proof degausser in the sense that it’s power and capability will outmatch any hard drive that you can throw at it during its lifetime.

Another benefit to tote is that there is no mess involved with this machine and it is relatively quick.

You won’t be picking chunks of hard drive or unjamming bits and pieces out of machine teeth with this piece of equipment.

Degaussing is a first stage destruction method for hard drives.

In top-secret and high-security use cases, it is recommended that you should crush or physically damage a hard drive for the second-stage of drive destruction.

This machine might be more pricey than other options, but it is a machine that will last you a long time, guarantee hard drive erasure, and make sure that you are staying compliant with data security.

Why do we love this hard drive degausser?

• Extremely reliable.

• The degaussing power of this machine is tremendous and future-proof.

• The 105 Degausser is NSA-Listed and has GSA Pricing.

• This piece of equipment has an internal Gauss meter and digital screen to assure the user that the hard drive has been degaussed to spec.

Conclusion

So, why did we show you all of these options?

Well… it’s because they really cover all of your possible applications for destroying data on a hard drive to NSA specs.

These destroyers range from $500 to $16,000 and they range from a handheld device to a sturdy machine for your office or warehouse.

Also, we mentioned first-stage hard drive destruction and second-stage HDD destruction.

Degaussing and destroying your hard drives will guarantee that nobody will have access to top-secret or classified information that may have been stored on your hard drives.

At Whitaker Brothers, we like to make it known that Degaussers are the way of the future.

They have the ability to instantly fry hard drives and magnetically remove the data that is stored on the drives.

Thanks for reading the article, and be sure to contact us if you have any questions for our experts!

If you haven’t checked out our articles on degaussers, check out my list below:

Degaussing: The Benefits of Using a Degausser In 2020

https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/blog/uncategorized/degaussing-the-benefits-of-using-a-degausser-in-2020/

The Fastest Way To Erase Data From A Hard Drive: 5 Methods Explained

https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/blog/uncategorized/the-fastest-way-to-erase-data-from-a-hard-drive-5-methods-explained/

The Top 3 Reasons Why A Desgausser Is Convenient

https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/blog/uncategorized/the-top-3-reasons-why-a-degausser-is-convenient/

The post 3 Of The Best NSA-Listed Hard Drive Destroyers Of 2020 appeared first on Whitaker Brothers Business Machines.

If keeping data secure is a priority for you, then your going to want to find solutions that work with your budget, space, and workflow.

In this article, we’re going to discuss the top 3 elements that make a degausser a convenient solution as an HDD sanitizer.

Degaussers Are The Perfect Size!

Degaussers really are the perfect size to deal with hard drive sanitization.

They range from a handheld degausser wand to machines that could fit perfectly at your desk or on a table.

There are no other NSA Listed hard drive shredders or hd crushers that have the convenience of handheld portability.

Degausser wands are uniquely convenient in the way that they don’t require an electrical outlet for operation.

In that way, degausser wands can be useful in any location.

Find the Proton T-1.5 Degausser Here: https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/proton-1100-degaussing-wand

Degaussers Are Simple To Use And Require No Maintenance

Find the Proton T-1.5 Here: https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/proton-t-1-5-drawer-degausser

Degaussers are as simple as pushing a button and listening to the “BOOM!” of the data getting wiped from a hard drive.

With other options such as hard drive shredders and hard drive crushers, you get the unfortunate mess of sharp chunks and bits of hard drives.

Hard drive shredders can cost you money and time if the teeth of the shredder get jammed.

With a degausser, a jam is out of the question.

With a hard drive crusher, you also deal with bits and pieces of hdd’s to clean out of the machine.

For the most part with hd crushers, there’s barely any mess, however, with a degausser there is no cleanup necessary.

A machine that doesn’t create debris will improve your workflow and add to the convenience of your daily operations.

The last thing that you need on your hands is a service nightmare!

Degaussers Are Incredibly Fast

Commercial degaussers can fire off in less than a second.

This is a level of productivity that you won’t find from other machines.

NSA listed degaussers have a lot more power and take about as long as other options like crushing a hdd. 

Whitaker Brothers offers degaussers that can be fitted with a chute so that the degaussing process is more hands-free and efficient.

Take a look at our comparison chart for other hard drive destruction methods:

Learn More About The Fastest Ways To Erase Hard Drives Here: https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/blog/uncategorized/the-fastest-way-to-erase-data-from-a-hard-drive-5-methods-explained/  

Degaussing Is A Convenient Solution For HDD Destruction

Here are the main takeaways from this article:

• Some degaussers are portable and can be taken anywhere and used without electricity.
• Degassing is a simple process that is free of messy particles.
• Degaussers are fast and can be great for improving your workflow.

Want to dive deeper into more benefits of degaussing? Check out our article, “Degaussing: The Benefits of Using a Degausser In 2020” to learn more.

Also, if you haven’t read our article that compares the fastest methods to wipe a hard drive, click here.

The post The Top 3 Reasons Why A Degausser Is Convenient appeared first on Whitaker Brothers Business Machines.

This article is going to give an overview of the speed that it takes to erase data from a hard drive using 5 different methods.

We are going to compare speed as well as efficiency and logistics of each method.

The methods included in this article are:

• DBAN or the Overwriting Method
• Hard Drive Shredding
• Degaussing
• Hard Drive Punchers
• Hard Drive Crushers

Here is the video version of this article if you’re interested in watching:

DBAN (Overwriting Data Method)

Screenshot Accessed From https://dban.org/

The first method that we’re going over is the oldest and goes by a lot of different names. 

There’s DBAN,  there’s Secure Erase, and a few other types of software that falls under the category of data overwriting. 

Overwriting is the process of taking all the data on a hard drive and putting a layer of data on top of it. 

Overwriting one time is considered very insecure, so some people go up to as much as overwrite seven times. 

For a long time, DBAN was considered the best way of taking care of a hard drive. 

Those days have kind of changed. 

The pros of using DBAN and Secure Erase are that it’s free and anybody can do it. 

As far as the cons go, it takes forever. 

A one terabyte hard drive could take up to 18 hours to complete depending on the speed of your computer. 

If you get up into the ranks of a 16 terabyte enterprise drive, you might need your computer doing overwriting for a couple of days if you want to do it seven times. 

It’s not a very popular method for destruction anymore because there are much better and significantly faster options out there.

Hard Drive Shredder

Pieces of shredded hard drive from a Model 104 Hard Drive Shredder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BrfOef7VRo Found Here: https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/104-2-hard-drive-shredder

The next method we are discussing is shredding a hard drive with an HD Shredder.

This is one of my favorites methods because it’s so satisfying when you drop in a three and a half-inch drive and it comes out in bits and pieces. 

It feels great!

The problem is, well I mean… it’s an industrial machine. 

It’s big, loud, and expensive! 

An HD Shredd costs $20,000 plus repairs are also going to run you $1,000 plus.

So hard drive shredding is a lot of fun. 

A lot of people use a hard drive shredder as their method of getting rid of drives even though there are still better ways for eliminating your hard drives.

Degaussing

Check out the T 1.5 Degausser Here: https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/proton-t-1-5-drawer-degausser

This method is my personal favorite! 

Degaussers are great but nobody knows about them. 

A degasser is in the shape of a small chamber. 

With a degausser, we’re not hooking the hard drive up anywhere. 

We just place it into the enclosed chamber and hit the button. 

The chamber charges up and then, “POP” releases what’s called an electromagnetic pulse that irrecoverably wipes all the data on the drive. 

In this instance, we’re not talking about overwriting it. 

We’re not taking the sensitive planners and turning them into bits of sensitive information. 

Instead, we are literally turning a hard drive into an inert piece of metal.

The only real drawback to a hard drive degausser is that the hard drive will have the same physical appearance before and after the degaussing process has been completed.

The best way to mitigate this drawback is to label hard drives as “erased” after they’ve been degaussed.

Hard Drive Puncher

Find the 105 Hard Drive Punch Here: https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/105-hard-drive-punch

Moving on through our list of hard drive erasure methods, we get into simpler forms of destruction. 

With a hard drive puncher, you drop a hard drive into the slot, you hit a button, and something goes through and punches a little hole in the hard drive. 

When you pull it out, it looks like somebody went to a shooting range and put a nine-millimeter bullet through it!

Watch the Demo Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPr_loLIgwk

What does this do? 

It makes it really expensive to recover any data on that drive. 

Punching a hole in a drive will work well for most business cases.

If someone wanted to take the hard drive to a foreign country and spend a couple of million dollars trying to put that data back together, just to find out who I’ve been emailing, then it would be possible. 

If someone tried to get that data, it would probably take over a year, be exorbitantly expensive, and there would be no guarantee of success.

But, punching has the advantage of being relatively fast. 

Punching also has the advantage of being quiet and of taking up the size of a normal office shredder. 

The disadvantage…

For the same amount of money, you could be degaussing.

Hard Drive Crusher

Check out the ACD-HS Crusher Here: https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/datastroyer-acd-hs-automatic-hard-drive-crusher

The final method that we’re going to cover is crushing a hard drive. For this method, you take a hard drive, you crush it, and it causes bending in the hard drive. 

At Whitaker Brothers, we refer to hard drive crushers as, “the taco maker” because it bends drives to a 90-degree angle.

Crushing a hard drive is lower on the price scale.

For the price, you’re looking at a range of $5,000 or less in most cases. 

It’s still meant for high security because it causes inflection in the hard drive makes it extremely difficult to recover data from.

Crushers can be approved by the NSA for second stage destruction. 

Degaussers can be approved for the first stage of hard drive destruction.

A hard drive crusher will do the job for you if it’s NSA approved. 

The advantages are that they are inexpensive, have a small footprint, they’re relatively quiet, and fast.

So, let’s go over how much time it takes to do each of these options.

Time Comparison Between Data Erasure Methods

Let’s go over the speeds of the different options we have because that’s what really matters to most people. 

I will also analyze what each method satisfies for data erasure.

DBAN (Overwriting Drives) SPEED

The first method we will focus on is DBAN, Secure Erasure, or otherwise known as data overwriting.

For DBAN, it depends on the speed of your computer.

 Supercomputers can do it way faster than normal desktop computers, but we’re talking about roughly 18 hours per terabyte.

The hard drive in my computer at the office is four terabytes. 

So for my personal computer, we might be talking two or three days to do that at least four seven times over. 

It’s kind of inefficient and you won’t see a lot of people doing overwriting anymore. 

The people that are doing overwriting, most of the time just don’t know about the other options available to them. 

Hard Drive Shredder SPEED

Let’s talk about hard drive shredding. 

This gets really fast. 

We’re talking about maybe 8 to 12 seconds from the time you turn it on to the time you’re reducing a hard drive to shreds.

There are more expensive ones that are faster. 

You’ve got less expensive ones that are slower, but we’re talking about you know 10 to 20 seconds per hard drive, so you will be going through drives quickly no matter which option you go with.

Degausser SPEED

Back to my favorite machine, a degausser.

These are great. 

Whitaker Brothers has a degausser that wipes a hard drive in zero to five seconds. 

I see most commercial-grade degaussers in the 20 seconds or less category.

If you get into NSA approved degaussers which are the highest security ones on the planet, they will degauss at four times the strength necessary to wipe a hard drive. 

Then we get into 25 sec., 35 sec. , 45 sec., and sometimes up to a minute per hard drive, but still, when you consider that overwriting could take days, spending one minute to degauss a hard drive is not so bad. 

Hard Drive Puncher SPEED

Moving on, you’ve got hard drive punchers. 

You drop a hard drive into the slot of the puncher, you hit the start button, and then you’re looking at about 20 seconds per drive or somewhere in that range. 

After the machine has punched a hole in the drive, it drops out the bottom into a waist spin.

Hard Drive Punches are very popular at the commercial level because they’re inexpensive, and because they don’t take up a ton of space. 

But as I’ve said over and over and over again. 

If you’re not buying a degausser to destroy your hard drives, it’s probably because you don’t know that they exist. 

Hard Drive Crusher SPEED

The final option is a hard drive Crusher. 

This is also very popular at the highest security levels, and also very popular at the lowest security levels. 

The reason being, it’s approved by the NSA, and it can destroy a hard drive in about 14 seconds. 

That’s fast. 

It doesn’t take up much space. 

It could easily fit on the desk right in front of me.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, I think I’ve made it obvious that degaussing is the way to do things and overwriting is history. 

Shredding hard drives is expensive, fun, and fast, but why spend all that money you don’t really have to. 

Hard drive punchers are cheap.

They don’t take up a ton of space, but we’re really just putting a little hole in it and all the data is still on the hard drive. 

You’ve just made it really difficult for somebody to put that hard drive back together in a way that it can be read again but it is possible. 

And then finally crushing a hard drive. 

With crushing, you’re causing a lot of flexion in the platters. You are again making it tremendously expensive to recover the data.

But for the price tag, why not just degauss. 

So, that’s my opinion on hard drive destruction. 

I’m sure other people might give you other ideas. I’ve been at this for about a decade though. 

I think I’ve seen most of the situations and applications out there. 

And again the only people who aren’t degaussing are generally the people who don’t know about degaussers or don’t trust them.

The post The Fastest Way To Erase Data From A Hard Drive: 5 Methods Explained appeared first on Whitaker Brothers Business Machines.

This article explains why degaussing is the best method of data erasure for hard drives in 2020.

A degausser is a machine that sends an EMP through a hard drive to erase the data stored on the hard drive.

Degaussing is the process that refers to the EMP that is sent through the hard drive to erase the magnetically stored data.

Overwriting Data On a Hard Drive

The first method that we are going to analyze is using software to rewrite data on a hard drive.

This method has been used successfully for years, but there are a few positives and negatives, to discuss.

The most typical method is by using the DBAN method. 

You can learn more about DBAN here.

Some of the positives aspects of this method include being easy to install and less expensive.

A negative of using software to rewrite data over data in a hard drive is that you can’t completely guarantee that the data is erased. 

You can rewrite data over and over again, but it doesn’t mean that the data isn’t still magnetically recorded. 

If your data can still be forensically retrieved, you are leaving yourself open to a potential breach of data. Especially if the data is top secret or highly valuable.

Another negative of this method for data erasure is that you need somebody who has enough technical skill to use the software safely and correctly.

If you are not tech-savvy, then you might need to hire somebody who is comfortable with IT to complete this process of overwriting your data on your hard drives.

Another factor to consider is that if you have a 1 TB hard drive to re-write, it can take up to 18 hours to complete.

It is a complete hassle to rewrite disks especially if you have more than one to do.

If protecting your organization from a breach is a priority to you, then using software would be detrimental to your data security process.

Should You Use A Hard Drive Shredder?

In the next section, we are going to discuss the pros and cons of using a hard drive shredder for the destruction of your data.

A hard drive shredder is a machine that will shred your hard drives into smaller pieces (approximately an inch in size) to make data recovery extremely difficult.

Technically, data can be recovered from a piece of a hard drive platter by a cyber-forensics specialist. With this method, however, it is still difficult to do.

A hard drive shredder is also expensive and requires maintenance. 

The price for a decent hard drive shredder can run around $25,000 as seen in the product listing below:

Over time, a hard drive shredder is the most expensive option or method of hard drive data destruction.

A hard drive shredder has many teeth that ultimately have the possibility of getting jammed.

I can guarantee that the last thing that you will want to do during your day is to reach down into a machine that has big metal teeth to pull out bits and chunks of hard drives!

One thing to add about hard drive shredders is that they can be bulkier and physically larger than the other options. On top of that, they can be noisy to operate.

Degaussing Drives: The Best Solution For Data Destruction

In this section, we’ll talk about degassing as a method of hard drive data erasure.

Degaussing is a method that uses a degausser machine to send in EMP pulse through a hard drive.

The process of degassing can take anywhere from 1-30 seconds depending on the machine that is used to degauss the hard drive.

A degausser is the best way to guarantee that the data has been forensically erased off of the hard drive platters. The EMP magnetically neutralizes the hard drive rendering it utterly useless.

A degausser is more expensive than software, But it’s less expensive than any a hard drive Shredder.

You can acquire a good degausser for as little as five thousand and some change:

As you can see, a degausser is less than a quarter of the price of a good hard drive shredder.

How Do We Compare Data Erasure Methods?

Time Comparison Between Data Erasure Methods

Cost Comparison Of Data Erasure Methods

Risk Of Breach / Data Recovery

Conclusion…

A degausser is the quickest cleanest and most efficient way to erase the data on a hard drive.

There is no mess involved.

There are no machine teeth that could be unsafe to deal with.

It’s compact.

Quick.

… And the cost is worth the guarantee of information security.

Contact us at 800-243-9226 or use our contact form here to get in touch with a Whitaker Brothers Product Specialist if you have any questions.

The post Degaussing: The Benefits of Using a Degausser In 2020 appeared first on Whitaker Brothers Business Machines.