Instances of identity theft spiked up sixty-eight percent last year.
If you were worried about sensitive personal or business data before, you should be even more guarded now. It’s tough to stay protected, though, considering that most of us have numerous devices, myriad accounts, and endless old data floating around.
It’s important to find a secure method to protect yourself. It’s also crucial to get rid of old data. We’re going to look at data erasure today, exploring this safe method of removing old data for good.
Let’s get started.
What Is Data Erasure?
Data erasure is the process of removing old information from your storage. It seems simple, but it’s a little more complicated than moving items to the “trash bin.”
Even after you move things to the trash and delete them, there’s a chance that the information can be recovered. Remains of the data still exist on the hard drive until they’re overwritten with new information. So, depending on the device and the size of your storage, you never know what information is still there.
That’s a good thing for hackers and thieves, but a bad one for you.
When you use data erasure software, you effectively overwrite all of the data that you want to remove. Instead of waiting for your old data to get replaced with new information as you use your computer, you cut to the chase and remove all traces of the deleted data.
Why Use Data Erasure?
It might seem like overkill to overwrite all of your deleted data. After all, who’s really going to get into your hard drive?
The answer is that you never know. If hackers can get into one of your devices or accounts, there’s a clear trail of breadcrumbs to your hard drive. That leads them to your financials, your personal history, old photos, and more.
It’s important that you have a frontline defense like a firewall service or web security software to guard you. Those don’t always work, though, so if there’s any sensitive information that you don’t want on your devices, it’s important that you wipe it with data erasure.
Try Certus, an effective data erasure software. The beautiful thing is that you don’t have to take your computer to a professional to have the data erased. Saas (software as a service) companies offer great options that you can download and run on your own.
It might take a while depending on the size of your hard drive and the number of devices you want to clean up. That said, after you use a data erasure method, you’ll be sure that there’s no trace of your old information.
Need a Secure Method of Clearing Devices?
Hopefully, the ideas above showed you that data erasure is a secure method of protecting yourself. There are more options for protecting yourself, though. We’re here to help with some more ideas.
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