HOBI Weekly Blog Recap (5/22-26/23)
More than three million cellphones were sold during Q2 of 2015. This number is up 13.5 percent from the year before, Gartner reports. Cellphone turnover is growing faster by the year, and so is the number of disposed devices, but are these devices properly refurbished or recycled? What happens if they aren’t?
The number of businesses adopting a BYOD IT policy for employees is growing as quickly as smartphone sales. While this increases convenience and flexibility for employees out-of-office, processing sensitive information on personal devices leads to more opportunities for data breaches.
A data security study conducted by Blancco Technlogy and Kroll Ontrack found trace amounts of previous users’ personal information on refurbished electronics being sold through major vendors, including Amazon, Gazelle.com and eBay. Some of the studied devices even contained enough information to identify the past user, including financial statements.
Even if users erase their information off the device before selling to a reseller, there are certain types of software that can recover the deleted information. This could lead to other unauthorized sources gaining access to sensitive personal or company information off these devices. For this reason, when pairing with a electronics refurbishing and recycling business, it’s imperative to work with a certified vendor with the best data erasure techniques possible.
When a device has reached the end of its use, a certified electronics recycling company ensures the device is refurbished for further use down the road, or components of the device are sold to environmentally friendly vendors. HOBI International, Inc. is a R2, RIOS, ISO 14001 certified electronics refurbishing and recycling company. HOBI provides enterprises with the best practices in data erasure, electronics recycling and electronics refurbishment.
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