Re: HazMat/Disposition

[James C Farr '05 <jfarr () UTICA EDU>]

We work closely with our Environmental Health & Conservation Department for
the same reason.  We contract with a company that picks up our pre filled
Gaylord boxes for $25. That covers anything but large screen monitors and
Televisions.  This company also has an optional paid service where they
destroy tapes, hard drives, or other media and gives a certificate of
destruction.  We use this service for things we cannot do ourselves like
destroying old media we no longer have readers for.

We wipe all media regardless of its classification.  Any time we
decommission a computer we pull the hard drive and wipe it.  Then there is
no guess work later.  If we want to donate, throw away, reuse, the equipment
is ready to go.

-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv
[mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Doug Markiewicz
Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2009 8:04 AM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] HazMat/Disposition

> What is everyone doing for disposal of computing/networking/peripherals?

We dispose of computing equipment through our Environmental Health and
Safety department.  They were originally responsible for disposing of CRTs
and eventually expanded those services to include storage media.


> Do you have HazMat regulatory requirements/procedures?

Any procedures of this nature are maintained by our Environmental Health and
Safety department.


> How about data classification - are some devices more sensitive than
> others which require a signature/2nd signature before disposal?

We do have a data classification scheme and we publish guidance on disposal
of storage media that references that classification scheme.  Our disposal
guidance is largely based on NIST SP 800-88 Guidelines for Media
Sanitization.  Our Environmental Health and Safety department contracts with
a third-party to dispose of equipment.  Storage media is destroyed and a
destruction certificate is made available to us.  We don't have much in the
way of checks to ensure storage media has been authorized for destruction.
We leave this for individual business units to manage.

Hope this is helpful.