Digital Information Security

Digital Information Security

QSGI, Hightstown, N.J., has introduced a Mobile IT Audit & Erasure Facility, which it describes as "the industry’s only fully functioning, self-contained IT asset management facility" that can operate directly at a client’s location.

QSGI delivers its mobile sanitation services using a 53-foot truck that is equipped with a full-service data erasure lab. According to Chris Schoeller, vice president of sales, data security and compliance, the truck can process 500 to 1,000 hard drives per day and removes chain of custody issues.

The system deploys Blancco software to sanitize the drives and to provide detailed reports to its customers on a per-asset basis. QSGI’s reporting also provides a summary of the devices’ capabilities and components. Schoeller says QSI does a standard three-pass wipe that conforms to Department of Defense standards, unless customers specify otherwise.

The company’s reporting system indicates any damaged drives that cannot be sanitized, at which point QSGI degausses these devices on-site prior to bringing them to its plant to be shredded.

The mobile facility uses wireless technology to transmit detailed reports and certificates of destruction to its clients while still on site.

QSGI offers a full suite of end-of-life and other life-cycle services, including a value-added remarketing program, to Fortune 1,000 corporations and government clients. QSGI also provides services for enterprise-class hardware, including mainframes, midrange servers, tape storage products and disk storage products. More information is available at www.qsgi.com.

Australia-based Sims Group (profiled in the May 2006 issue of SDB sister publication Recycling Today), which bills itself as the world’s largest scrap recycler, has acquired two North American electronics recycling companies.

Sims estimates that it is capable of handling nearly 25 million computers, monitors, television sets, refrigerators, toner cartridges and other types of electronic scrap per year following these acquisitions.

Sims’ Recycling Solutions division completed the acquisition of United Recycling Industries (URI) during the first quarter of 2007. URI, a Chicago-based electronics recycler, provides a full range of services, including collection, refurbishment and re-sale of equipment, chip recovery, mechanical processing of monitors, recycling of electronic scrap and secondary smelting and refining of high grade electronics.

Sims also has acquired the end-of-life recycling assets of Xstrata Copper Canada’s facilities in Roseville, Calif.; Lavergne, Tenn.; and Brampton, Ontario. The three facilities, previously owned by Noranda, provide asset recovery and recycling services, including mechanical processing.