Electronic Confetti: Advantage E-Cycling Properly Disposes of Technology-Stored Medical Records on Mississippi Medical News

Electronic Confetti: Advantage E-Cycling Properly Disposes of Technology-Stored Medical Records

By: JULIO GONZALEZ, MD, with LYNNE JETER

Steve Earley and the hard drive shredder in action.

On a typical workday, Tim Earley dispatches an Advantage E-Cycling mobile shred truck to a hospital or medical office, with a 6,600-pound, 50-horsepower, 4-shaft shredder in tow. Before the AE crew departs the site, a 29-inch-by-27-inch cutting chamber—the centerpiece of patent-protected machinery—will shred electronics at the rate of 1,000 pounds of metal and plastic per hour, with office staff witnessing the demolition.

“The machine crushes, pierces and shreds the platter. It completely disintegrates the hard drive platter rendering the data unrecoverable,” explained Earley, CEO of Jackson-based Advantage E-Cycling.
Earley was working with ACS Record Center in Flora, a client of Advantage E-Cycling, when then-owner Danny Jones approached him about acquiring the company. The deal was finalized last May.

“Danny knew I was entrepreneurial by nature, and thought it would be a good fit in my portfolio, while also providing a good opportunity to work with family,” said Earley, who immediately recruited his brother, Steve, a parole officer in Rankin County. Steve had seen firsthand the devastation of identity theft resulting from improperly disposed computer monitors, hard drives, CDs, and backup tapes.

Solving the Retired Computer Equipment Riddle

Advantage E-Cycling CEO Tim Earley answered a few common questions about the proper disposal of retired computer equipment.

Is donation of my old computer a good idea? What are the risks associated with donating my obsolete computer equipment?

Old computers are often donated to charity, or can be auctioned off or sold to the general public at large, potentially with sensitive data still residing on the hard drives. Whether discarded individually or en masse, it’s entirely possible these computers and servers still hold business data, unknown to new owners. Much of that data could be software applications and trivial information, but frequently the information left on these machines is extremely sensitive. Unless stringent steps are taken by users or IT staff, these hard drives will contain data and other sensitive information, whether customer, financial, health or medical records, or even information related to national security or government policy. Data on computers, despite apparent loss due to natural disaster, equipment failure, human error or security breaches, is rather resilient. Data often thought irrevocably lost can be and is frequently retrieved by data recovery specialists.

Can I delete the data on my computer and make it safe to discard or donate?

You may have thought the data was deleted by the user of the PC or the IT department, but if it was deleted without special software, that data will still reside on the hard drive of the discarded computer, making it easy prey for hackers.

To be truly effective, data removal procedures must go beyond the simple deletion of a file from the computer user’s desktop.

What many users don’t realize is that when most computers delete a file, the contents of the file aren’t actually removed from the hard drive: the digital file—made up of bits and bytes—is still there, but it’s no longer linked to the file system. In essence, the page is in the book, but not in the table of contents. The actual data remains on the disk until the operating system re-uses those sectors to write new data. Even if you format a drive, that data is usually not erased, but the table of contents is merely wiped clean.

It’s important to remember the simple deletion of a file by the operating system only removes the directory pointers to the file; the digital information still resides on the computer’s hard drive until it’s overwritten. Even re-formatting or re-partitioning a hard drive isn’t enough to guarantee the files are completely gone, even if the end user can’t see them anymore.

How can I guarantee that my computer data is safe when the computer has reached the end of its useful life?

Where the destruction of data must be guaranteed and the chance of retrieval must be eliminated, physical destruction of the hardware is the best course of action.

Media may generally be destroyed using a number of methods, including scraping by an abrasive substance directly on the magnetic disk or drum recording surface. Corrosive chemicals can have the same desired effect; however, the entire recording surface must be completely removed before disposal. Destruction of the drive—or the entire computer—can easily be achieved by shredding. This is the method Advantage E-Cycling uses to ensure the secure destruction of computer hard drives.

“The threat of identity theft demands destruction of old media,” said Earley. “Overwriting and degaussing hard drives simply isn’t enough. To be 100 percent sure that all data are irrecoverable, physical destruction of the medium is the only viable choice. Smashing a drive with a sledgehammer or putting it in a hydraulic press is a lot of fun—until you've done it a dozen times. We offer an alternative—you simply ship your media to us in secured containers, or we pick it up. Either way, we'll put it through our industrial shredder. When it comes out the other side, it’ll be a pile of tiny pieces to be recycled.”
With little marketing, Earley saw an immediate increase in business.

“We usually get the call when hospitals, medical offices, and other businesses upgrade their old computer systems to a faster system,” said Earley. “And quite frankly, they’ve typically called us when there’s no more room in the storage closet.”

The initial questions for Earley usually are: Do you recycle these items? Do you handle the labor to take care of it? Environmentally-conscious people ask: Can you get rid of it properly?

“Federal mandates governing the protection of data is prompting most new clients to take extra precautions to properly dispose of computer equipment,” said Earley. “For example, a recent Hewlett-Packard Financial Services survey showed that very few corporate executives knew they could receive severe fines or be jailed for improper disposal of computers. More than 75 percent of those surveyed underestimated the cost of computer disposal. More than 65 percent of executives with purchasing authority were unaware of the potential fines they could face for improper disposal of computers.”

The Health Information Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 represents the first federal legislation to put teeth into requiring physical destruction of medical data versus erasing or formatting the data, said Earley.

“HIPAA allows fines up to $250,000 and 10 years in prison for each violation of patient health information privacy rules,” he said. “It’s only going to get tougher as new security regulations are handed down. Ignored, it’s going to open the door to litigation.”

In the destruction process, serial numbers are scanned and recorded to provide customers with a complete audit trail. Afterward, Advantage E-Cycling, which is EPA-compliant for electronic media and hard drive destruction, provides a signed and dated Certificate of Destruction, recognized by the National Association for Information Destruction.

“Residual materials are removed and recycled in full compliance with all local, state and federal regulations,” he said.
Advantage E-Cycling requires no up-front work—no inventory, lifting or loading. Hard drives destroyed off-site are inventoried and either shred onsite at the customer location or packed in a secure case for transport via locked truck to the Advantage site. All computer and office electronics are transported in a secure truck to the Advantage site. Unique only to Advantage is a second verification process performed on all items to ensure no hard drive or media storing devices leave Advantage’s control without being shredded.

“Our main competitors are national companies, many of which are based in California where e-cycling began,” said Earley. “California was the first state, followed by 22 additional states, to pass legislation to keep old PCs and monitors out of landfills. Mississippi may one day get there.”

Overwhelmed mom-and-pop operations often call on Earley for assistance destroying retired computer equipment. “You can’t just toss it out because hazardous materials are contained within them, such as lead, mercury, cadmium and brominated flame retardants,” he explained. “These substances are included in the products for important performance characteristics, but can cause problems if the products are not properly managed at end of life.”

Based in Jackson, Miss., Advantage E-Cycling has a service area that includes Mississippi, , Alabama, Louisiana, southern Tennessee, eastern Texas and southwestern Arkansas.