As our dependence on data grows, private sector enterprises can learn an important lesson from military and intelligence agencies. That is, to protect data effectively, you need a secure way to destroy it.

The fact is, enterprises are generating record-breaking volumes of data and regulations are requiring them to retain it for longer periods of time. The sheer volume of data to be managed and protected has added significant cost and risk to every phase of the data protection lifecycle - from optimized backup, to replication, to archive, and to final destruction.

While most CIOs acknowledge the importance of adopting faster, more cost-effective ways to backup, deduplicate, and replicate data, few appreciate the importance of efficient, secure data destruction. In many organizations, it still remains a manual process of shredding or demagnetizing physical tapes. After all, how difficult or expensive is it to destroy a physical tape?

That’s where the record-breaking data volumes come in. At the volumes being managed in today’s data center, the cost and risk is exorbitant. For example, there is the administrative time (labor cost) spent keeping track of data to be destroyed. The manual task (more labor cost) of unmounting and cataloging tapes. The risk of human error. The risk of tape loss, theft, or mishandling. This risk is particularly acute while tapes sit around waiting for a shredding service to arrive. Imagine the cost of losing a single tape cartridge with customer account information, medical records, proprietary IP, or email on it.

Let’s not forget the cost of actually destroying and disposing of physical tape media. That plastic takes an environmental toll as well. When the data is destroyed, you need to record their destruction for auditing purposes. That adds more admin labor and potential for human error.

Recognizing a growing need for a better solution, SEPATON announced Secure Erasure™ for our data protection appliances. Now you can retain more of your data online – with 2 TB disk drives and deduplication, you can do afford to keep enormous volumes of data online. With Secure Erasure, you have a simple secure way to destroy virtual cartridges when the data is no longer needed. All that administration time is reduced to a simple push of a button. It automatically provides an email of what cartridge was destroyed – no more manual auditing. No wasted media (disk is reusable) and no plastic cartridges to dispose of – delivering a greener data center.