Avoid the ‘I told you so’ lecture at all costs

You would never dream of putting your hard copy bank statement in the bin, would you? Not without at least tearing it up into little pieces. Maybe you bought one of those home-shredders? It is the same at work. If you print out something confidential, you are careful with it. You would not leave it out on your desk whilst you nipped to the loo, and you would shred it if you threw it away. It is second nature. You know something contains sensitive information and you are sensibly careful with it.

Which makes some people’s attitude towards IT data security unfathomable. The same person who bought one of those home-shredders to destroy their private correspondence, left their old PC at the local tip, in the dry WEEE store, without any real idea what would be done with it, and ignoring the fact that all that correspondence and more is still on the hard drive. Every word, every account number, every little detail of your life.

Mr Spock would call it illogical. We do not seem to connect the hardware to the printout. No one would bother to turn that old PC on and dig around for old personal files, would they? Well yes they would actually. Because data, information of almost any sort, is valuable. Cyber crime is on the rise and no one really knows what will happen next, because it is quite new. We have only really been using computers for twenty five years or so, and the internet is even younger. 

The basic bottom line is if it is valuable, someone will try to nick it.

So our apathy is getting more and more dangerous. We have to wise up here. However you do it and whoever you use, you need to sanitise your data before you dispose of any piece of kit. Be it a phone or a laptop, a tablet or a printer, think about the memory. It may only be a small percentage of people that get caught out this way but why would you want to be one of them?

When you get rid of anything with a memory you are taking a risk, a gamble. Every single time. As soon as you let that old PC out of your sight, you have given your data to someone else. Serious if you are a consumer, bloody scary if you are a business. Because as a consumer, you are only risking your own data, your own identity, your own bank balance. But as a business, you risk other people’s data, and as such you have a duty of care. You can be heavily fined and soon imprisoned if you do not fulfil that duty of care.

Lightning rarely strikes but when it does, it tends to hurt. I’ll give you another little example from my own life. In my private life, a pair of jeans is second skin to me. And for forty odd years I always put my wallet in my back pocket. Never gave it a second thought. My then wife used to nag me about it when we went out. She said it was easy to steal, in plain sight, but I doubted anyone could take my wallet out of my pocket without me noticing. And it had never happened...until one day at Crawley cinema. It was heaving and I was focussing on my son, then little more than a toddler, who was doing his best to get lost in the crowds. I caught him and took him back to his Mum, who was queuing for a drink. I went to pay...and no wallet.

An expensive lesson which got me the ‘I told you so’ lecture. Which no man ever wants to hear. So now I am a little more careful. In busy places, I move my wallet to a less obvious place. I manage the risk. Which is, as I may have said before, what data safe IT recycling is really about.

We do have to change our collective attitude to data security. There is no alternative. Cyber crime is not going to go away. You know I am right. Every person I sit down and talk this through with in any detail ends up agreeing with me. You cannot trust dumb luck to protect you, and you cannot do half a job and expect to stay safe. Sooner or later your luck always runs out. Do it, and if you are going to do it, do it properly.

Otherwise I am going to be right here saying I told you so!

The Technical Mystery Tour

Roll up. Roll up for the magical mystery tour.

Boxing Day 1968 I think, might have been 1967. My whole family and half of the Western world all gathered around their TV sets to see the Fab Four’s TV film The Magical Mystery Tour. I was 6 or 7 and loved The Beatles. I am told I once gave a lively rendition of She Loves You in the doctor’s surgery as a toddler which raised a few smiles. Unfortunately however, as the recent repeat reminded me, Magical Mystery Tour offered a few good tunes but the plot may have been over-influenced by some artificial stimuli and four creative egos rapidly spinning out of control.

However, the idea of a tour ought to remain high on our agendas, magical or otherwise. EReco are keen to show customers our secure facility in the depths of East Grinstead, because we know it is what sets us apart from the crowd. And more potential customers ought to take up our offer because when disposing of your data, you ought to do a proper risk assessment.

What? I heard a collective sharp intake of breath there. Disposing of your data? That isn’t what you are doing at all, is it? You are disposing of old IT assets, redundant kit, sometimes broken kit, but you are protecting your data, aren’t you?

Well, yes AND no.

You are engaging a partner to deal with your data, and if that partner is reputable you are protected by their systems, and insurance. So clearly your intention is not to throw the baby away with the bathwater. But, and it is a very big but, your data is still there and it is still your responsibility. If something happens you are going to need to prove that you exercised your duty of care.

Clearly it is not practical for every business to visit their supplier. If your disposals are small and irregular, some reasonable due diligence would probably suffice. However, if you are a business of reasonable size a risk assessment probably makes a lot of sense. There are no margins of error here of course. No matter how large or small your disposal is, it only takes one hard drive to go missing or not get processed, and your data is ‘out there’.

Now I am bound to approve of this sort of thing of course. EReco has substance. Our facility is not a shiny palace of recycling heaven but it is efficient, substantial and secure. We may be many things but we are not back of the van sort of people. We are not fly by night. Believe me, if you visit and I will introduce you to Karen, our process queen, and she has a form for everything and a knowledge of ISO’s and WEEE regulations that ought to have John Humphrey’s and the Mastermind team quivering in their boots.

Her majesty emphasises what eReco has and many of our competitors do not. She is the one who makes us get our waste transfer notes right. She is Miss Compliance, a dotter of I’s and a crosser of T’s that our customers need. When my eyes glaze over, she is the one who reminds me, kindly, that like it or not we all have to get the paperwork in order.

It is what we charge for and what I cannot see how anyone offering free collections can offer. And it is tangible if you take a couple of hours out of your day to come and see it for yourself. Del-boy’s lock up may not be so impressive.

And Hey Bulldog, I promise not to sing.

Kanye Who?

Oh I love modern life, don’t you?

Kanye West, whoever that may be, has released a song with Sir Paul McCartney about his son North (Yes really) sired with Kim Kardashian, who is some sort of reality TV star on a channel, let alone a program, I have never watched. His many fans took to Twitter to congratulate young Kanye for sponsoring new talent and wondering who this bloke McCartney was.

Hilarious, right? In what version of this world is it possible to reach adulthood without at least knowing who Macca is? I mean, even a high court judge is likely to have heard of Liverpool’s favourite son these days.

However, this may be a salutary lesson about the power and reach of information. 

You only know what you know, and if you do not go out of your way to become informed, you are not likely to pick up the information you need. So as I listen to Radio Two and Four in the car and only vaguely know what Spotify is, I am highly unlikely to come across Kanye. I had sort of heard of him, but never listened to a song and have no desire to do so, although that Ed Sheeran bloke seems to write a nifty tune.

My point, and you knew I had one, is that no one can take for granted that their information is getting out there. No one has ever done enough. And the amount of serious data breaches in 2014 and the level of apathy concerning data security I encounter most days is living proof. People do not get how serious this stuff is, except perhaps Angelina Jolie. Who would have guessed she had an ego the size of Australia if Sony hadn’t leaked like a sieve?

I have said before that there is too much stick and not enough carrot here. Fining the negligent is all well and good but how about educating the apathetic? If HMG can afford to tell us all how our taxes are being spent, on a printed leaflet, surely they (as in the government) can provide some definitive advice to businesses large and small on how to do this stuff? It is not rocket science.

Too much time is spent at the top level, getting very technical about system controls and big ticket projects to stop North Korea ruining the seventh Star Wars film, and not enough telling the Insurance Broker in the High Street that his livelihood is at stake if he doesn’t do A, B and C.

Sustainability and the Boomtown Rat

Life is like a flow chart. Every decision, however innocuous, sends you off in a different direction. Yes or no. Tea or coffee. In or out. We all make snap decisions that change the course of our lives all the time. We usually have no idea whether they were right or wrong. We simply have to live with the consequences of our choices.

Businesses are just the same. Good decisions can be made on the spur of the moment. Remember the guy from Decca Records in 1963. He decided that guitar bands were a thing of the past. He watched four chancers from Liverpool audition and told their manager he was not at all interested. So The Beatles signed for Parlophone instead and that funded EMI, who were one of the most successful music industry giants of all time, until the rise of iTunes.

He made up for it a year later though; he signed The Rolling Stones.

Not every decision is that important, but they all have consequences. Sustainability and the efficient reuse of our limited resources depends on us all making good decisions. Not everyone is green. Not in the campaigning sense at any rate. But given the right information, most people will separate their rubbish and put it in the right bins.

This makes a difference. Yes I know China has opened 22 coal-fired power stations since I started writing this post but that is not the point. If we all take personal responsibility for our own actions we will change things. We don’t all have to burn our bras but we do need to do our bit.

I do hate it when politicians or campaigners get preachy. They make it all sound so pious and I am sure that attitude turns as many people off as it turns on. I much preferred Bob Geldof’s fund raising style...’give some focking money’...to the Archbishop of Canterbury wittering on. That might just be me of course...

Electrical waste will become more of an issue, not less. Electronic devices are taking over. No sooner has the iPhone 6 been launched than iPhone 7 is being talked about...and that means upgrades and old kit being disposed of. According to latest figures there are now 7.19 BILLION ‘mobile devices’ in this world.

So we have to start being responsible. Not blasé, apathetic or mean-spirited, but truly responsible. I am not just talking about asset disposal either, although that is eReco’s own area of expertise and self-interest. From the manufacturers to the end user, we all have to think things through.

The cost of disposing of old kit is an irrelevance. It’s recycling is not. That does not mean a company like ours should charge you a fortune...far from it. And it does not mean that you should not be able to benefit from extending the lifecycle of equipment beyond your ownership. But it does mean that we should prioritise the recycling aspect above costs or cash back.

Price is not everything. We have all heard that before. It usually comes fourth or fifth in any survey mainly because we do not like to admit we are tight, I suspect. When buying any equipment, we should consider price but we should also consider lifecycle and sustainability.

Bob Geldof would put it rather succinctly I am sure. Paul McCartney would probably right a song about it, hopefully not with the Frog chorus. Forget about the Chinese and let’s get our own house in order.

Let’s put sustainability at the top of the agenda in 2015.