What is Magnetic Degaussing?
Degaussing, the method of eradicating data signals from magnetic media, involves applying a potent magnetic field to neutralize existing data, leaving behind a faint, consistent background signal. Our services include on-site and off-site degaussing, tailored to your needs. With over 50 years of nationwide experience, we ensure compliance with corporate policies and legal requirements. Trust our proven process and skilled team to deliver top-tier security for your degaussing and disposal needs.
How Does Degaussing Work?
A degausser serves as a crucial tool for eliminating magnetic data stored on tape and disk media. By subjecting the media to a powerful magnetic field, a degausser effectively neutralizes or erases the stored information. This process ensures complete data destruction, making degaussing the standard method for eliminating magnetic data. Selecting the appropriate degausser is paramount to guaranteeing irretrievability of your information.
Degaussing simplifies the process of demagnetizing hard drives or tapes, utilizing magnetic fields measured in units of gauss or oersted. Different degaussers are required based on the coercivity level of the magnetic media, ensuring thorough data eradication.”
Understanding the writing process of magnetic media is essential. Magnetic tapes consist of three key components: iron oxide powder, a binder, and film backing. During recording, tape recorders move the tape past small blocks called heads, which generate a magnetic field altering the iron oxide powder into a pattern. Playback heads then translate this pattern into sound, video, or computer data.
Similarly, hard drives operate on a comparable principle. Instead of tape, they utilize a spinning platter coated with iron oxide. As the platter rotates, a read/write head applies small pulses of electricity to magnetize its surface.
Degaussers play a crucial role in data erasure by generating a powerful magnetic field that permanently removes magnetic memory from the iron oxide. The required magnetic field strength varies based on the type of media. Modern tapes and hard drives demand higher magnetic strength. We tailor our degaussing process to the specific type of tape your organization uses, ensuring effective data destruction.
Degaussing: Data Destruction Basics
Everything you need to know about erasing data from magnetic media.
Read the blogWhy Consider Degaussing?
Enhanced Security
By degaussing, your tapes or hard drives are stripped of all data, making them unusable in the future for enhanced security.
Compliance Assurance
For compliance with governmental or organizational regulations mandating storage media destruction, degaussing stands out as the most efficient and adaptable method.
Assured Certainty
With a degausser of sufficient field strength, rest assured that any storage device passed through it is completely rid of viruses and corrupt data, ensuring 100% certainty.
Media Restoration
Experience the restoration of various media types to their original condition, resulting in improved recording performance.
Is Data Safe After Degaussing?
Our stringent data destruction protocols adhere to approved processes sanctioned by cartridge and drive manufacturers, ensuring utmost security and confidentiality of your data. Receive Data Destruction Certificates and Confidentiality/Non-Disclosure Agreements at zero cost. With our guarantee, your data’s security and confidentiality are assured. Handling tens of thousands of media pieces monthly, we professionally destroy your data and responsibly dispose of component materials, providing you with peace of mind.”
Conforming to Laws and Regulations
Degaussing magnetic media, particularly magnetic tape media, stands as the approved method for data destruction. Simply reformatting your tapes falls short. Through degaussing, all data is thoroughly eradicated, ensuring compliance with industry and federal regulations governing data destruction. These regulations include:
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
- Sarbanes-Oxley Act (governing corporate reporting and auditing practices)
- Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (Financial Services Modernization Act)
- USA Patriot Act (Bank Security Act)
- Homeland Security Information Sharing Act (regarding federal agencies’ security information)
- Other regulatory bodies overseeing Data Destruction (such as FDA, SEC, Utility Commission, etc.)
Why don’t many businesses degauss their own media?
The answer is simple: cost. Investing in pricey equipment and extra labor for degaussing isn’t appealing to most companies. That’s where we come in. With our expertise and handling thousands of pieces monthly, we offer a cost-effective solution to streamline your backup process. Let us take care of the degaussing while you focus on what matters most.