Data destruction done wrong could cost your company millions www.theregister.com/2025/09/1…

With the end of Windows 10’s regular support cycle fast approaching, and a good five years since the COVID pandemic spurred a wave of hardware replacements to support remote work, many IT departments are in the process of refreshing their fleets. But what they do with decommissioned systems is just as important as the shiny new ones they buy.

If you dispose of your old corporate laptops without making sure – really sure – that their drives are erased, you could be liable for millions of dollars in fines or legal damages if sensitive data falls into the wrong hands. For example, in 2022, the US Securities and Exchange Commission fined Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MSSB) $35 million for failing to properly dispose of devices that contained personally identifiable information (PII) after the finance firm hired an unqualified moving and storage company to clear out some datacenters.