TASKMASTER® Industrial Shredders Help Protect Privacy

Lost or stolen computer media puts millions of individuals’ privacy at risk. TASKMASTER® shredders are playing a major role in the proper disposal of computers, drives and media.

For a large volume of hard drives and backup tapes, a 75 HP TASKMASTER® Industrial Shredder Model TM3042 has proven a rugged workhorse. This unit features 7 inch diameter shafts and hardened alloy cutters. It destroys up to 2 hard drives per second and a vast quantity of tapes instantly.

The safe destruction and disposal of a growing stream of electronic scrap and computer storage media is now a major recycling priority in the United States and many other countries. In the US alone, according to National Safety Council, more than 5,000,000 PCs will be relegated to the scrap heap in 2007. A major problem is that those PCs are loaded with confidential data such as names, accounts, social security numbers, tax returns and more. Deleting of files on the disks as well as backup tapes or reformatting of disks offers little or no protection either. Nor does actually drilling holes in the hard drives. The data is often easily accessible with readily available data recovery software.

Companies now have to contend with a host of government regulations including the Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach, HIPAA and FACTA. Data security is a major problem for corporations. In response, they are stockpiling their old discarded computers using up expensive storage space. Companies are also increasingly reluctant to donate their old computers to charities because of the expense and risk involved.

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A NEW BREED OF SHREDDING SERVICE

A new breed of data security company is cropping up in response to this problem. These companies provide complete shredding of the storage media either disk or tape as the ultimate solution for the problem. The small scraps discharged by the shredders are then melted down for plastic or metals recovery.

While complete shredding of these devices is a critical part of the data destruction process, the availability of shredders, up to this task of dependably and completely destroying these components, was very limited. One company had to go overseas to have a special shredding device custom made. The problem is that many of these electronic components are extremely tough and quickly destroy most common shredders.

Franklin Miller Inc is one American manufacturer that has a special line of shredders called TASKMASTER Shredders that have proven their capability for this job. Says company President, Bill Galanty, “We had some learning to do at first when it came to shredding of these tough electronic components. But what we have today is one of the few shredders of its type that’s up to this job.”

Franklin Miller offers several models of these shredders that are optimized to completely shred storage media, backup tapes, hard drives and electronic components of all sorts.

A close look at the TASKMASTER design reveals some keys to this capability.

The TASKMASTER reduces a wide variety of tough solids with an extremely versatile, high torque shredding mechanism. Two powerful stacks of intermeshing blades intermesh at close clearance and a low rotational speed to crush and shred anything trapped between the oncoming cutting teeth. Adds Galanty “there’s no match for the reassurance of seeing a hard drive going into this unit and coming out in 1001 pieces. We call that ultimate reassurance.”

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