So, I present my paradox: If the data was sensitive, it wouldn't be disposed of properly. If the data is irrelevant or encrypted at rest, the disks are disposed of unneccisarilly.

I bet what you were handling wasn't -that- comparatively sensitive, so its a whole bunch of human effort and material being pulverised for no reason.

Because I can ensure you that the people who should -always- be that thorough are not. Especially right now. There's all sorts of drives that shouldn't be out in the wild, out in the wild.

I'm a little surprised there isn't buyers for liberated disks (and their data) from ASEAN datacenters.

Additionally, if an attacker wanted to steal your business data, they'd be your contracted, approved disposal partner already.

[–] ToxicWaste@lemmy.cafe 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

what would be your way of disposing that sensitive data?

not arguing that there are disks beind disposed inproperly.

[–] greyscale@lemmy.grey.ooo 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

if its encrypted at rest, it doesn't need it.

[–] W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Until that encryption is broken. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or next week, or next month.

But if the business is paying the money to have the disks shredded, then there’s probably a good reason to do so. I wouldn’t want to find out that my bank sold their old (server) drives to the public.

[–] greyscale@lemmy.grey.ooo -2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The problem is is that I severely doubt that there's anything of value on it. Have you any idea how many disks are full of banal static?

[–] W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 days ago

And how many disks aren’t full of banal static?

Should we recycle drives? Abso-fucking-lately; make the AI data centers run on refurbed drives.

[–] ToxicWaste@lemmy.cafe 4 points 4 days ago

for me and you, that is probably enough.

but you always need to know who or what is a potential threat to you. in the end it is just about making it enough of a pain for whoever might be interested in your data, so it is not worthwhile to them. having to break out forensic tools - just to get encrypted data, is probably painful enough for most. make them play puzzles with metal and glass shards will for sure open some wounds to pour salt on.

cremating disks is a thing for hacker collectives. termite is an extremely interesting thing to observe. but i am pretty sure there are more practical reasons, why people do that.