Ultima, a leading provider of on-premise and cloud IT infrastructure and managed service solutions, is warning companies today to stop the ‘Naughty Elf’ pinching company data left lying around on obsolete technology over Christmas.
Ultima estimates 85% of companies have a pile of old laptops, hard-drives and even old servers lying around waiting for the Elves to attack; often stashed away in their ‘Room of Doom’ that no one knows what to do with. Under the new GDPR guidelines penalties for data loss are increasing from £500,000 to €20m, or 4% of annual worldwide turnover.
Gordon Esslemont, Commercial Director, Ultima says, ‘Companies that aren’t dealing with their old technology are risking data loss and damage to their brand reputation as well as large fines. We call the rooms that companies store all their old equipment in their ‘Room of Doom’ because potentially if they are breached by unscrupulous people they risk losing critical data, which in extreme cases can end in the company’s demise.
“All companies are potential targets and to ignore old technology piles is not good practice. The 2016 Government Security Breaches Survey found that nearly three-quarters (74%) of small organisations reported a security breach and we know this is only getting worse. A simple way to protect your company from exposure of data loss from old technology is to engage someone to erase and recycle it correctly,” says Esslemont.
Ultima offers, in partnership with N2S, a fully bespoke range of services for data erasure and destruction. The end of life equipment is recycled to comply with the new GDPR data regulations and the EU WEEE Directive. The service extends to not only hard drives, but media devices, tapes and any other device which can hold or store critical data. The service can be tailored to meet the needs of small companies who want to sort out their ‘Room of Doom’ to large data centres that need ‘decommissioning’. Together the firms will have recycled over 1600 tonnes of legacy IT in 2017.
