To be absolutely be sure that there is no data left on your hard drives when they are disposed of, your IT Department needs to do more than just reformat the drives, as there is plenty of software available on the internet that can recover files from reformatted drives.Luckily, there are also plenty of programs available on the internet which can cleanse drives of all data, in accordance with US department of Defense Standard 5220.22-M, which stipulates what is called a “low level format”.
If you are in the UK, don't exclude the possibility that, following the HMRC scandal, investigative journalists may try to target old hard drives your organization disposes of, with the aim of exposing you by recreating customer data.
Read how to destroy data beyond recovery at:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,110338/article.html
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/page5726.cfm
Read how to destroy data beyond recovery at:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,110338/article.html
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/page5726.cfm
However, the simpler option may be to use a physical destructor!
