A new report reveals current practices and policies for device sanitisation - and specifically SSDs -within the public sector. For Blancco's study, 'The Price of Destruction: Exploring the Financial & Environmental Costs of Public Sector Device Sanitization', researchers spoke to 596 government IT leaders across nine countries. The survey revealed that the governments and public sector organisations represented spend as much as US$17M annually on the physical destruction of solid-state drives.

Additionally, replacement costs added another $40M, bringing expenses up to $57M for destroying public sector technology that is often still usable. For 70 organisations surveyed in each country, the costs for SSD destruction and replacement reached between $6.9M and $7.3M for the US and between $6.4M and $6.9M for the UK.

The study also explored the environmental costs of physical destruction and the public sector's current engagement with sustainable alternatives. Unnecessary destruction increases IT operations and materials costs for fiscally constrained public sector organisations. It also fosters increased e-waste creation during a global call for more prudent environmental stewardship.

Despite 54% of respondents agreeing that reuse of SSDs is better for the environment than physical destruction and almost all respondents (93%) saying their organisation had defined plans to reduce the environmental impact caused by destroying IT equipment, less than a quarter (21%) are actively implementing those plans.

For security reasons, physical destruction is still mandated if decommissioned drives were used to store classified or secret data. For unclassified data-bearing assets, other data sanitisation solutions are available.

On the whole, respondents were well informed of their country's or region's respective data protection laws. However, some respondents' processes for carrying out compliant SSD sanitisation are concerning. For example, 78% of respondents globally said they reformat drives to sanitise them. Unfortunately, formatting alone can still leave drives vulnerable during transport or storage, and much of the data can be recovered with forensics tools easily available online.

The report concludes that governments and public sector organisations are committing to sustainability improvements, but very few have pushed forward with their implementation. This is resulting in a high cost of SSD destruction and replacement.

According to Blancco's study of public sector respondents:

• 41% of respondents say physical destruction is mandated by law to physically destroy SSDs that contain classified data, so they destroy all SSDs "just in case."
• Almost a quarter (22%) are unaware of alternative methods of sanitization.
• Between 23% to 52% of organizations within a country believed that physical destruction was cheaper than other sanitization solutions, including those that would facilitate reuse and longer device life.
• Between 37% and 45% of our respondents' devices, or the drives alone, are sent offsite for physical destruction.

"Governments and public sector organisations are responsible for handling some of the most sensitive information in the world. But several factors, including accelerated digital transformation, rising numbers of public sector data breaches and global sustainability initiatives, are changing the data management landscape," said Alan Bentley, President of Global Strategy, Blancco. "With growing environmental and funding pressures, there is a need for these public sector operations to be more sustainable and efficient while maintaining robust security. Public sector organisations must explore SSD sanitisation alternatives to demonstrate prudent use of agency funds and a greater contribution to national and international sustainability efforts."

More info: www.blancco.com/the-price-of-destruction