Personalisation Story: Circular Data Solutions

Guest post from Circular Data Solutions.

Our increasingly digital lives are creating volumes of data on a daily basis that have never been seen before. According to a report released last summer, “Over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every single day, and it’s only going to grow from there. By 2020, it’s estimated that 1.7MB of data will be created every second for every person on earth.” Where does all that data live? In the data centre, of course.

Combining the volume of data generated with the lifespan of a hard drive only six to 12 months long, data centre operators are destroying 150,000 – 200,000 hard drives per year for one data centre alone. Those numbers shouldn’t surprise anyone, but they do present unique cradle-to-grave challenges in how to dispose of the data to meet GDPR requirements.

Under GDPR, data centre operators are identified as “Processors” having responsibility with the “Controllers” (i.e. customers) for the security of personal data records stored within the data centre. Companies and organisations of 250+ people have to record the process of how they destroy end of life data in their RPA. This includes data stored in the cloud and at data centres.

This is where Circular Data Solutions comes in. Circular Data Solutions Ltd is the European distribution partner of Security Engineered Machinery Co Inc (SEM). For over 50 years, SEM has specialised in the design and manufacture of comprehensive end-of-life solutions for the protection of sensitive information. Circular Data Solutions offers a variety of crushers, shredders and disintegrators to hyperscale, colocation and private data centre companies. In addition, the company understands the importance of disposing of waste materials responsibly, so all destroyed materials are collected and recycled with an R2 certified partner – the leading standard for electronics recycling.

According to the latest Host in Ireland Quarterly Report, hyperscalers account for 72% of the data centre market in Ireland. These predominantly American companies have strict security disposal requirements that need to be GDPR compliant. They have moved away from using third-party suppliers to destroy decommissioned hard drives. One reason being solid state hard drives (SSDs) have been growing in popularity over the use of hard disk drives (HDDs). SSDs have better performance with lower access time and latency. However, SSDs work so well at storing data that it is difficult to erase these drives. Many standard sanitizing techniques that are used on HDDs are not as effective on SSDs, primarily because of the SSDs’ use of flash memory. Another reason is that hyperscalers require disintegration down to 2mm beyond the industry standard 5mm. As a result, they now deploy their own ‘in-house’ data destruction equipment as an integral data security facility.

Colocation providers have gone down a similar path. Because of their role as a “processor”, they need to meet the same GDPR standards as the hyperscalers. However, due to their scale of operations, they need smaller, more cost-effective form factors of the equipment to accomplish in house data destruction, something they can offer as a value-added service.

Like their fellow Host in Ireland colleagues, Circular Data Solutions has been very successful listening to needs of data centre providers and adapting them across Europe. Implementation of their data destruction solutions by the major hyperscalers and colocation providers quickly opened up opportunities in the Nordics, Amsterdam and Germany. As Michael Wegmermer, director of Circular Data Solutions, explains, “Every question that was asked by the hyperscalers as they came into Ireland, required a global solution. We needed to present innovative ideas that addressed local market needs. What we found was this model was easily replicated across the rest of Europe.”

As Circular Data Solutions demonstrates, data centres are an industry of real substance providing the Irish economy and companies with growing import and export opportunities. The country has a long-standing history in the data industry, with over seven decades of foreign direct investment. As a result, Ireland – it’s companies, people and policies – understands the networking and hosting needs of companies that deal with digital assets globally. Data centre providers can rest easy knowing there is a superior level of data protection that ensures the safety of even the most sensitive data and information to be found in Ireland.