Indian Govt Spending 416 Mn INR on SSDs Despite having Alternatives?

Government and public sector agencies are responsible for managing, processing, and safeguarding SSDs, some of the most sensitive—and potentially exploitable—information within society. To better understand the policies followed by these organisations while dealing with end-of-life data bearing assets, Blancco commissioned a research to Coleman Parkes.

The survey revealed that the Indian government and public sector organisations represented spend USD $5.5 million (INR 416 million) each year on the physical destruction and replacement of solid-state drives (SSDs). For security reasons, physical destruction is still mandated if decommissioned drives were used to store classified or secret data. However, for unclassified data-bearing assets, other data sanitisation solutions are available.

According to the study, while 40% of India based respondents agreed that reusing the SSDs was beneficial for the environment, only 26% were actively implementing methods to securely erase SSDs and reuse them.

Other key India stats include -

• The report interviewed 70 respondents in India who play a major role in the decision-making process within their organisation.
• 32% of respondents say physical destruction is mandated by law to physically destroy SSDs that contain classified data, so they destroy all SSDs.
• 38% of respondents believe that physical destruction is cheaper than other sanitisation solutions.
• Almost a quarter (23%) are unaware of alternative methods of sanitisation.
• 41% believe there is no certified or approved vendor or solution that provides another option for them, the highest from all the countries surveyed.
• While 42% of respondents stated that they physically destroy drives because it’s more secure than other data sanitisation solutions, only 14% strongly agree that they have full confidence in their organization’s physical destruction process (41% slightly agree).
• 41% of Indian respondents’ devices, or the drives alone, are sent offsite for physical destruction.

While this study shows the opinion of the respondents, the best method of keeping the unused SSDs safe and the procedure to handle them is not a matter of opinions. These aspects must be decided by experts and by the courts. Hence, the findings of the report should be taken with a pinch of salt.