I had an employee provide a resignation before I was on site. The employee then unplugged a desktop computer and left the premises with it. The computer contained pricing data, customer data, email communications, login credentials to several important websites, login info to vendor websites.
I filed a police report and the police were able to recover the computer, however the data on the machine was wiped or the drive was replaced.
What should I do?
I don’t know what this ex-employee did, whether they merely deleted files, performed a quick format, or wrote over the data. In addition to the possibility of wiping the entire drive, there are also secure delete utilities that wipe individual files, but It’s quite possible they aren’t sophisticated and the data is all still there if a person knows how to find it.
When I perform data destruction for clients, I usually use the drive’s built in secure erase feature because it’s the fastest way to wipe a drive and also ensures that spare sectors get erased as well.