One of the unsung heroes of the modern data-driven business world is the Management Service Provider. The MSP provides a wide range of services focusing on the management of data and internal resources, and as such, often serves as the crux of all major data decisions. If the business world were a worksite, the MSP would be the foreman.
And as with any good foreman, the MSP is only as good as the tools it utilizes to get the job done. One of the most important jobs that an MSP might take on is the destruction, erasure, or sanitization of data that is no longer needed. While this is often handled internally, as more companies see the value of the MSP, these processes and the tools used to engage them to need to be more robust than ever.
Today, we’re going to take a look at data destruction as a process, and why it’s so invaluable for MSPs. We’ll also take a look at a good solution, ClaraWipe, that will enable these benefits to be gained for any MSP, small or large.
ON-SITE DATA DESTRUCTION AS A SERVICE
Providing on-site data destruction as a service isn’t something routine – it’s a specialty, a unique skill, a powerful addition to your offerings that organizations will absolutely leverage. While it seems crazy to think that an MSP might not offer this process as standard, the truth is that most MSPs are more concerned with providing the infrastructure at large for data processing and storage.
The actual destruction, then, is often handled in a simplistic form. While this is decent enough for small businesses, this becomes problematic with larger companies, especially when they deal with extremely valuable or legally protected information. Shipping data off-site introduces new exposures in security that are disconcerting, threatening, or downright illegal in many circumstances. As such, offering even a partial data erasure service in an on-site manner is extremely valuable both in the economy and in approach.
Being able to provide data destruction is valuable – being able to do it on-site is even more so. ClaraWipe enables this huge benefit and adds direct value to your operating offerings. This is especially important for medical, banking, and other such industries where data simply cannot be moved off-site. In such situations, offering on-site data destruction not only makes you more attractive, but it can also make you the only possible option on offer.
FASTER DATA PROCESSING
A big benefit of handling data erasure, destruction, and sanitization is the fact that handling all of this as a single approach results in faster, more complete data handling. Many organizations find themselves dealing with inadequate MSPs, and as such, farming out this functionality piecemeal to other organizations that specialize in one or more functions.
For an MSP with data destruction capabilities, however, they offer a literal one-stop-shop. Being able to store data, manage data, and erase data securely, efficiently, and completely throughout its lifecycle is a huge selling point for most organizations.
ClaraWipe is extremely fast and utilizes a wide range of patterns to deliver your specific needed metrics. Being able to tailor your response to a specific use case using a general tool is extremely powerful, hugely important, and just downright cool. Additionally, this ability offers you much greater flexibility when it comes to dealing with specific data types, sets, or constraints, matching speed with efficiency to ensure complete (and prompt) data erasure.
UNIQUE SOLUTIONS
Being able to depend on a tool is also incredibly important not only to the functionality offered but to the ease of employing that functionality. Incorporating a tool that allows for custom sanitization standards, boasts great support and reliability, and has documented compliance with major standards and certifications means that your offerings are that much better.
Additionally, incorporating a strong erasure platform ensures a decrease in operating costs. Many hardware or specialty implementations can incur costs of 10-20k upfront before data is even handled. Being able to offer this service as part of a comprehensive product is extremely valuable to the average organization, and is as attractive from a security standpoint as it is from a business standpoint.
Because ClaraWipe works with pretty much any type of media storage and interface, you can ensure that there are very few, if any, situations that you won’t be able to handle. Offering complete, comprehensive coverage of all major standards and situations will make your MSP offering that much more attractive and advantageous for the adopting party.
LONGEVITY AND COMPATIBILITY
There’s also an obvious benefit of incorporating a strong solution as part of a total MSP process in that you can more directly manage devices with specific needs and use cases. Being able to remove data before a device is unplugged reduces the number of touches, improving longevity, and reducing overall cost. Having a specific process implementation allows for compatibility with solid-state, flash, and other types of hardware.
All of these are direct benefits of adopting ClaraWipe. Other solutions, such as implementing hardware-based data erasure or utilizing system-specific appliances is far and away from a worse solution – it enforces a strict hardware limitation, operating environment restriction, and general operational demand.
By implementing a software-based solution that is largely hardware neutral, you can ensure long-term operational freedom, in addition to the aforementioned benefits of increased longevity and compatibility.
TRUST
A huge issue when it comes to data management is offsite security. When data destruction is outsourced to an external provider, that data needs to be sent, it needs to be analyzed, and it needs to be used outside of a secure environment for your organization. This represents extreme security issues for most organizations, and can in fact create just as many security problems as not properly handling the data in the first place.
There’s the obvious concern as well that, as you move away from generalist electronic recyclers and into specifically skilled data erasure and destruction providers, you dramatically increase the costs incurred. This creates a situation in which you either pay up or suffer the service quality.
As an MSP, being able to provide these services with no overhead in a way that is effective in all IT environments makes you essentially unbeatable. ClaraWipe offers exactly this, and in a package that matches all major national and international standards and certifications, including:
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOx)
• HIPAA & HITECH
• The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA)
• US Department of Defense 5220.22-M
• CSEC ITSG-06
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
• Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)
• EU data protection directive of 1995
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)
• California Senate Bill 1386
• and others.
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, the benefits of an MSP cultivated by incorporating ClaraWipe is simply too good to pass up. Being able to ensure compatibility, improving longevity, and processing data more efficiently is only part of the picture. The fact is that having the ability to offer such services as an MSP adds more tools to your toolkit, making your services more attractive and bolstering all of your efforts.
More than anything else, adopting ClaraWipe increases your ability to secure systems and protect consumers. This has its own legal considerations, but more than anything else, it offers the pinnacle of function in the MSP space.