Destruction and Disposal Procedures

Destruction & Disposal Procedures

All information, in any format, destroyed from any location must have due regard to confidentiality of our employees, clients and customers

When records or data files identified for disposal by the Retention Policy are destroyed, if they are sensitive data then a register of such records needs to be kept

The procedure for the destruction of Confidential or Sensitive Waste on paper, card or microfiche is as follows:

All office quality paper should be mechanically shredded if the content is in any way sensitive. (If you dispose of waste by using the shredder, ensure that it is used safely in accordance with its operating instructions, and that waste is shredded in such a way that it cannot be put back together again, and made comprehensible)

All other paper can be disposed of in the boxes or bins provided in offices for environmentally-friendly disposal of white non-confidential and non-sensitive paper waste.

The procedure for the destruction of Confidential or Sensitive Waste on electronic media such as tape, disk, cassette/cartridge, hard drives, CD-Rom, DVD and ZIP drive is as follows:

• Media that are being destroyed because they are showing signs of damage or are obsolete should be physically destroyed by being cut into pieces or other ways prior to disposal
• Where disks, tapes, DVD or CD ROM are being used to supply data to third parties they should, at the very least, be reformatted before the files are saved on to it. The process of saving files to the disk may overwrite areas of the disk previously used, but this is no guarantee of preventing retrieval of previously stored files
• The most effective way to ensure that media are cleaned of all previous data is to use a utility package to perform a "secure wipe"