If he feels the improperly disposed data are sufficiently valuable, he can try commercial or custom software to recover encrypted data. Several ways exist to protect these data: encryption, data destruction, archival, or secure erasure.Įncryption does protect data, but once you lose physical possession of a drive, time favors the criminal or attacker.
Personal identifying or health data disclosure are too frequent outcomes of leaving our data on laptops or drives we lose, discard, or sell. In a companion post, How to Securely Erase Removable Media Using Mac OS X, I explain how physical loss, theft or improper disposal of laptops or removable drives is the most common data breach of electronic personal health information.
