Bank account numbers, health records, social security numbers and internal auditing operations are examples of the kinds of information that is unknowingly "leaking" out from data centers. This agitating drift is the result of companies improperly casting away of used data storage products at end-of-life, admitting a arising practice of merchandising used computer tape cartridges to so-called "recertifiers." Imation declared it has brought out these and extra severe data security and financial hazards facing Corporate America because of improper damage of used information storage products.

Data leakages occur when data storage managers, who increasingly facing budget restraints, deal or offer tape pickups carrying, company data to a reseller who lays claim to delete or destruct the data. The reseller often "recertifies" the cartridges without amply erasing the data and then sells them back into the marketplace. In a lot of cases, the data storage manager is not aware of this exercise because it is these cartridges that oftentimes contain secret company and client data.

Imation has ascertained by its testing that many tape cartridges, especially those with magnetic servo tracks, cannot in fact be whole wiped clean. With nowadays high-capacity cartridges, substantial amounts of data may be led intact and disclosed to unsought rifts. A normal magnetic tape cartridge can store hundreds of gigabytes of data, with the most modern high-end cartridges bearing up to a terabyte of data. An calculable one million cartridges are "recertified" each year.

While the pattern of reselling used tape was constituted to extenuate budget constraints, the prices associated with data breaches can far overbalance any savings. Agreeing to industry analysts and other people who study the fiscal, security and repute risks of data breaches, the monetary value to companies resulting from the failure to protect data is growing each year. In a 2006 report from the Ponemon Institute (2006 Annual Study: Cost of a Data Breach) the median cost to companies per lost buyer record as a result of a data breach is $182. Multiply this with the thousands of separate records that may remain on improperly retired used data storage products, and the financial risk of exposure to these companies becomes apparent.

Concording to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, as of early October 2008, more than than 245 million individual records have been exposed as the result of data breaches in the last three years alone, and that number is on the boost. In summation, the Ponemon Institute study found that more than 90 percent of information breaches occur in digital form and the prices affiliated with data loss are increasing into the billions of dollars every year.