Out with the old, in with the new — now that we are into a new year, a lot of people are thinking about clearing out technology they might no longer need. From now-obsolete laptops, cellphones, and tablets, 2022 might be the time we dispose of devices that don’t fit seamlessly into our day-to-day lives.
In fact, the United Nations reports that 53.6 million metric tons of “electronic waste” was created by the world’s population in 2019, as cited by IEEE Spectrum. Additionally, just 17 percent of this electronic waste was recycled. This means all of that leftover technology creates serious hazard for both public health and cybersecurity.
The perils of ‘e-waste’
IEEE Spectrum spoke with ERI CEO John Shegerian about the perils of this e-waste.
Shegerian, who as the chief executive of ERI, presides over one of the globe’s largest electronics disposition providers, recently published a book called The Insecurity of Everything: How Hardware Data Security is Becoming the Most Important Topic in the World. In the wide-ranging interview, Shegerian said that this waste is the world’s “fastest-growing waste stream by an order of magnitude.”
While this poses huge environmental threats, it also sheds light on serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Many of these devices people are simply throwing in the trash contain highly sensitive data if they fall into the wrong hands. Shegerian said we need to reorient our perspective to disposing of data the way we do with sensitive physical paper documents.
“Really in 2012, I started speaking to companies about the need to ‘shred’ data the way they shred sensitive papers, they look at us like we were green Martians,” he said in the interview.
Now, people are more receptive to his warnings. He said a big push behind writing his book was to hammer home the reality -- both to the global firms he works with and individuals — just how “ubiquitous” everyone’s technology is. It’s everywhere and it means data is often left exposed.
“They weren’t really sold on the hardware data destruction part” of device disposal, Shegerian said of people’s initial embrace of the environmental threat of “e-waste” over cybersecurity concerns.
What you should know
“I once had a big, big bank call me up: ‘John, we’ve had a breach, but we don’t believe it’s phishing or software. We think it came from hardware.’ I go out there and it turns out one of their bankers threw his laptop in the trash in Manhattan and someone fished it out,” he said. “On that laptop was information from the many clients of the entire banking firm—and the bank’s multi-billion-dollar enterprise. The liability, the data … God, just absolutely priceless. If it got into the wrong people's hands, the ransom that could have been extracted was truly of huge magnitude.”
Recommendations for the average reader are clear. If you trade in an old device to a retailer, make sure you vet them first.
Confirm that all of your data will be destroyed before they attempt to resell your phone or computer. If you plan on disposing of an old tablet or computer, remove old apps and delete sensitive photos and connected accounts — make sure no trace of your past activity is easily accessible to third parties.
As you make way for new technology, be sure to keep your data protected.