Electronic Data Security Firm Sees Growth

WindsorTech Inc. has seen an increased interest in security and environmental concerns, as well as stricter regulations boost the company’s operations.

The company, a data security and environmental compliance services company, is seeing increased demand for its services from both corporations and government agencies due to increased liability exposure from improperly retired end-of-life IT equipment. Total revenue for WindsorTech's second quarter increased 167 percent to $4.9 million, compared to $1.8 million for the same period in 2003.

"Corporations are increasingly aware that they are liable for remarketed computer and mainframe hard drives that hold sensitive data, ranging from patents to proprietary business records, to customer and consumer account information, and, in the case of healthcare providers, to patient records that are confidential by law," said Marc Sherman, president and CEO for WindsorTech.

"You can no longer just say I want to scrap this computer or send it to a recycling facility without documentation that the hard drive has been properly sanitized or that the disposal meets EPA standards," he added.

"Just as organizations retain outside auditors to assure that their financial records meet appropriate accounting standards, organizations retain us to guarantee that the disposal of their IT assets meets government regulations for this type of equipment," Sherman added. "In fact, we have raised the bar for the resale industry: We will not take IT assets for resale unless hard-drive erasure is part of the work or we are fully indemnified, with the job having been done internally, so that we don't take on the end users' risk."

The company offers corporations highly customized and turnkey packages for their end-of-life IT assets, including data erasure, system audits and asset tracking, which are now mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, designed to increase corporate accountability, and it helps companies remarket their IT machinery so that they almost always collect a residual fee for their old machines.

In keeping with EPA regulations, the company recycles almost all salvageable parts from notebooks to mainframes, providing clients with a complete audit report regarding the function, condition, configuration and fair market value of their assets. With a client's approval, the machines are then re-marketed as complete units to a primarily international market place or broken down into parts to be re-marketed here and abroad.

The erasure is performed in keeping with Defense Department standards, applying three consecutive wipes over the data with a series of X's and O's. Clients are issued a "certificate of disposition," verifying that they have properly disposed of their IT equipment.