Mobile Data Shredding

Mobile Data Shredding’s Baltimore, Maryland office will be open for you to drop off your sensitive paper, hard drives, backup tapes, video tapes, audio tapes, CDs and other materials for secure shredding every weekday.

Appointments are required, please call 877-225-6010 at least 24-hours in advance.

Whether it be paper files, confidential records, old tax returns, canceled checks, receipts, business or personal records; we will be able to securely shred those documents conveniently and at a very reasonable price.

Typically, business and residential shredding requirements are handled at your location with our on-site shredding vehicle’s powerful industrial shredding system. But now you have an option to drop off your materials at our facility to save on costs. This is perfect for small-volume shredding needs or for when you need fast destruction and can’t wait to schedule. Maybe you just need to drop off materials on your way to or from work and will enjoy this convenience. In any case, we’re here to help!

Drop Off Schedule:
• Every weekday
• You MUST call ahead to schedule your visit.

Typical Procedure:
• Bring your boxes, bags, tubs, containers, etc.
• Your paper documents or other sensitive materials will be safely and thoroughly shredded at our secure facility.
• You will be presented with an official Certificate of Destruction for your records.

You can contact us online to schedule a shredding drop-off or call 877-225-6010

Mobile Data Shredding, Inc.
8841 Kelso Drive
Baltimore, MD 21221

The Long and Foster Realtors office in Abingdon, MD will be sponsoring a community shred!

Sunday, April 22 from 1 pm till 4 pm.

Our mobile shredding vehicle will be parked in their parking lot for secure on-site shredding.  This is the perfect time to get rid of all your old files, tax returns, cancelled checks, etc.  Your important documents will be securely shred on-site. No need to remove paper clips, elastic bands or staples; however, we cannot accept plastic binders, plastic sheet protectors, plastic bags, xrays or microfilm on-site.

Location:
Long and Foster
3004 Emmorton Road
Abingdon, MD  21009

Any questions, or if you would like to arrange a community shred for your community, please contact Vicky Dodson at 774-454-3107.

With Mobile Data Shredding, Inc. we take a serious, comprehensive approach to Data Destruction. A simple system, as usual, involves many specific steps in order to guarantee a full, complete and proper end result. To that end we have inserted Degaussing (data erasure) as a valuable part in our Menu of Data Destruction Services. With some organizations this phase is often a crucial component of the destruction activity in order to comply with corporate or government security procedures. The following will describe degaussing, it’s application with data media, and how Mobile Data Shredding’s full complement of services will fit with your destruction requirements.

Degaussing is generally defined as data erasure when applied to magnetic computer media, including diskettes, back up tape, VHS tape, audio tape, hard drives, etc. In this paper we will refer to these magnetic back up devices as ‘Media’. Degaussing is an effective method, when applied properly, to permanently delete information written to computer media. There are some important considerations that apply, however, as degaussing is absolutely not fool proof or a ‘one size fits all’ process.

Degaussing is performed by a machine called a ‘Degausser’; using an alternating current electromagnet which will totally scramble the bits and bytes of magnetically recorded information on the computer media. The scrambling procedure obliterates the previously recorded data and renders it un-recoverable.

One other significant detail applies when degaussing is used. That is, some types of magnetic computer media have a ‘Servo-Track’ recorded onto them. This servo-track is not data, but acts as an alignment tool enabling the specific computer media to properly marry the computer read/write drive. Servo-Tracks are magnetically written to the computer media at the factory where the media is manufactured. Degaussing erases everything on the media, including the servo-track. A good number of computer tape cartridges and practically all hard drives use servo-track technology. If these media devices are degaussed, they cannot be re-used, data cannot be re-recorded onto them, and unless re-formatted by the factory, they become totally useless.

POINTS TO PONDER

• Degaussing magnetic computer media prior to destruction is not necessarily a required step in the process. The shredding function thoroughly and completely destroys not only the data, but the entire media device as well … complete and total destruction.
• Degaussing is necessary, however, for certain organizations; a necessary step in the data destruction procedure as set by the facilities, security, legal, management or IT team. Some Corporations and Government Agencies have instituted high security standards that require both degaussing and shredding as components in the destruction process.
• Degaussers are sophisticated devices, should be operated in the proper environment, some times require a special high voltage electrical power source, and are quite expensive. One single degausser may not have the proper specifications to handle every piece of media designated for data destruction.
• In consideration of cost, volume, frequency of need, manpower available and other factors, an in-house degausser may not be appropriate or justifiable in all situations.
• Once the project to destroy the data and/or the media devices is complete, there still remains one additional step in the process. Arrangements must be made to haul the computer media debris away. This specialized debris, typically hundreds or thousands of pounds per project, must be disposed of or recycled properly, in order to comply with local and EPA regulations.

The Bel Air Center (intersection of Rt. 1 and Rt. 24) is having a community shred!

Saturday, April 7 from 11 am till 3 pm.

Now is the time to clean our those old file cabinets and get rid or your old tax returns, cancelled checks, files, etc.  Your important documents will be securely shred on-site. No need to remove paper clips, elastic bands or staples; however, we cannot accept plastic binders, plastic sheet protectors, plastic bags, xrays or microfilm on-site.

In addition, the Center will be hosting a Family Day with radio station WWMX Candy Cube and mid-day personality Maria Dennis from 12 noon till 2 pm.

Any questions, or if you would like to arrange a community shred for your community, please contact Vicky Dodson at 774-454-3107.

Have you ever read news articles in the newspaper reporting some sort of security breach in a company or government agency involving lost or mismanaged paper files or computer backup media?

In every state of the country these types of mishandled secure personal, financial, medical or corporate data occurs daily. Sometimes the local news media hears of it, sometimes it does not. Sometimes the authorities discover a security breach; when that happens things can get publicly messy and expensive.

Federal and State Governments are very serious when it comes to protecting citizens’ rights, including rights for privacy. Identity theft is just one example.

You can go to the Legislative Compliance section on our website to read more about privacy laws, including FACTA, GLB and HIPAA.

If you are a resident of Maryland or operate a business in Maryland, you may be interested in PIPA, the Personal Information Protection Act.

Within PIPA there are quite a few mandates including requirements for notification to officials as well as those consumers who may have been harmed. In addition, the business with the security breach must conduct an investigation to determine the fallout of the offense. Naturally, all of that can get pretty costly, as lawyers, investigators, police and the OAG all get involved. Once the newspapers, TV and radio stations catch wind of these incidents, a much higher cost is paid; that is consumer confidence in that company, including its procedures and reliability when dealing with the public’s most private information.

Here is a link to Maryland’s PIPA Guidelines:
www.oag.state.md.us/idtheft/businessGL.htm

You may find it interesting that, in addition to paper files, computer tape, CD’s, VHS tape, flash drives, hard drives, etc. there is another ordinary device that holds a lot of data. Digital Copiers Could Be An Identity Theft Threat as well. Many mid-size to large copiers manufactured since 2005 include hard drives, that contain images of any document that has been scanned or copied.

The data held on the digital copier hard drives is held to the same standards as other types of media and governed by PIPA as well.

For more details see:
http://www.oag.state.md.us/idtheft/Copiersecurity.pdf

How does this involve Mobile Data Shredding?

As part of the PIPA guidelines, an additional practice is mandated:

“When a business is destroying records that contain personal information, it must take reasonable steps to protect against unauthorized access to or use of the personal information. A business that owns or licenses personal information must implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices appropriate to nature of the personal information and nature and size of business.”

Mobile Data Shredding, Inc. is your source for compliant, secure, data destruction services. Our programs, including Scheduled Shredding and On-Demand Shredding Services will provide you with a low-cost, high level of confidence in managing sensitive materials recorded onto paper or computer backup media. Contact us directly to discuss these measures.

Mobile Data Shredding, Inc.
8841 Kelso Drive
Baltimore, MD 21221
877-225-6010

Long and Foster is once again holding a community shred.  This is the perfect time to clean out your desk, file cabinets and basement of all the old files, tax returns, cancelled checks, etc. you have been holding on to and don’t know how to get rid of them securely.

This spring’s shred will be on Saturday, October 29, 2011 from 9 am till 1 pm at their Columbia location:  10805 Hickory Ridge Road, Columbia, MD 21044.

No need to remove paper clips, staples or binder clips.  However, we cannot accept plastic binders, plastic sheet protectors, plastic bags, xrays or microfilm.  If you have xrays you would like to get rid of, we can take them and destroy them off-site at another time.

Several of the villages in Columbia will be hosting community shreds this fall.  If you have been wanting to get rid of your old files, taxes, bank statements, etc., now is the time and your community will help you.

The events are for residents of the specific communities only and IDs will be checked.  Following are the villages participating and the dates of the events:

Dorsey’s Search Community
September 10
9 am – 1 pm
6 boxes per person limit

Wilde Lake Community
September 17
9:30 am – 1:30 pm

Owen Brown Community Center
September 24
9 am – 1 pm
3 boxes per person limit

Long Reach Community
October 1
9 am – 12:30 pm

Hickory Ridge Community
October 15
9 am – 1 pm
3 boxes per person limit

King’s Contrivance Community
November 5
9:30 am – 1:30 pm

Long and Foster, a state-wide real estate agency in Maryland, is helping with your spring cleaning projects. Their Windsor Mill location is sponsoring a community shred.

Our mobile shredding vehicle will be available on July 16th 2011 from 10 am -1 pm to destroy all your old medical records, tax files, personal files, etc. No need to remove staples or paperclips. We can shred your manila folders and hanging files as well. Please, no x-ray films, plastics or cardboard. No pre-arrangements are necessary — just come by with your documents and we will be happy to shred them. This service is sponsored by Long and Foster and there is no charge.

Long and Foster

7000 Security Boulevard

Windsor Mill, MD 21244

Since the early 1960’s computer technology has enabled us to store vast amounts of data magnetically onto portable storage devices. Although many technologies have been introduced and marketed, Magnetic Tape and Hard Drives have survived to become by far the most common storage media. Cost per byte stored, ease and speed of recording and access, as well as the secure longevity of the data written onto these devices are all contributing factors.

Round reel (9-track) computer tape capacity was generally 60-80 megabytes. 50 years later we now see single cartridges, a fraction the size of a reel of tape, with 3.0 terabyte capacities in compression, storing roughly 1,000 times the amount of data in a comparatively miniscule space for a tiny fraction of the cost. Hard drives have seen a similar genesis. The large disks, or washing machine disk packs of old were large, slow, very expensive, and extremely sensitive. Technology sales people loved these disk packs as they cost a lot and broke down regularly. In the early days, hard disk capacity was measured in digital words, then up to 5–10 megabytes. Now we have 3.0 terabyte hard drives available in a tiny 2 ½” form factor installed in lap top computers!

Other types of storage have found their place in data processing and high capacity storage applications including many variations of optical media. Microfilm & microfiche, Beta, VHS (as well as other variations of video), Magneto Optical (MO), WORM, CD, DVD, are several examples.

Regardless of the technology used, all these different categories of storage media have one important thing in common … ultra-high volumes of sensitive information stored onto very small, hand held devices.

As the computer, server, recording device or application is upgraded, retired or broken, all that data must be transferred to newer media and/or destroyed. That’s where Mobile Data Shredding comes in. We solve the data retirement void by coming to your location to securely destroy hard drive and other computer media. Learn more about our hard drive and computer tape destruction services or Contact Us today to get the most effective, efficient, and secure on-site destruction and shredding services available.

Free secure shredding of all your sensitive documents!

On Saturday, April 30, 2011 from 9:00 am till 1:00 pm the Mobile Data Shredding, Inc. truck will be at:
Long & Foster
3004 Emmorton Road
Abingdon, MD 21009
Hours are 9am – 1pm

Long and Foster, a state-wide real estate agency in Maryland, is happy to help with your spring cleaning projects. Their Abingdon location is sponsoring a community shred and our mobile shredding vehicle will be available from 9-1 to destroy all your old tax files, office files, personal files, etc. Now is the time to clean out your file drawers and have them shredded at no charge. No need to remove staples or paperclips. We can shred your manila folders and hanging files as well. Please, no xray films, plastics or cardboard. No pre-arrangements are necessary — just come by with your documents and we will be happy to shred them. All our shredded paper is recycled so this is a green project.

Mobile Data Shredding, Inc. is very active with community, public and private shredding programs. Visiting us during one of our local shred events is an effective way for anyone to learn more about our Secure, On-Site Shredding Services and the benefits they provide.

For more information regarding this event, to find out how to arrange a community shredding day of your own, or about our secure services in general, please contact Vicky at 774-454-3107 or online here.