Your Legal Responsibilities

Our Absolute IT data sanitisation services help you minimise risk and avoid data loss. As a data controller, each company that holds electronic data is legally obliged to safeguard their data and ensure it is disposed of in a way that avoids risk to that person from identity theft or fraud.

Failure to safely dispose of personal data relating to customers, suppliers or employees can lead to substantial fines, or even imprisonment if a security breach occurs. The Information Commissioner’s Office is empowered to fine companies up to £500,000 for each data security infringement, if that data is considered confidential.

With stakes as high as these, it is absolutely critical that businesses are aware of and carry out their legal responsibilities towards their customers.

What data is covered?

The Data Protection Act (DPA) covers a wide range of information commonly stored by companies. In relation to IT systems, the DPA applies whenever you record or store data on an electronic device, or use the data to perform any action – which includes the destruction of the data itself.

The following types of data are covered:

• Personal Data; including any information by which a living individual can be identified. This includes bank details, address, email address and spending habits.
• Electronic data; this covers all data held in electronic form, including everything on computers, tablets, smartphones, HDD’s, USB drives, DLT backup tapes, DVDs and floppy discs.
• Emails stored on hard drives, archives, and cloud-based backup systems.
• Documentary, or Manual Data; including all paper documents, printed emails and printed versions of electronic files.

For more information about the DPA and how it affects you, please visit the Information Commissioners Office.

Helping you with compliance

Our data disposal services ensure compliance with the DPA, while also saving your business valuable time and money. For a free quote or to find out more about our services, please call 01332 371 989, or send us a message through the form on this page.