Recycling isn’t only good for the environment. It could be critical to an agency’s security.

That’s because clicking “delete” on a computer doesn’t truly rid it of its data.

Jeremy Farber helped found PC Recycler in 2003, and in 2009, the company was added to the General Services Administration’s list of contractors providing both on- and off-site data-destruction services for federal agencies.

“We focus on secure destruction,” Farber said in an interview on Industry Chatter.”We’re looking for clients that have a need to dispose of obsolete electronics but really want to take high consideration to data security and how that information that’s being disposed — how it’s going to be managed.”

PC Recycler lists the Defense and Justice Departments among its federal clients.

Farber said the need for secure data destruction has grown — as awareness of data security, in general, grows with each news report about a data breach.

“We focus on physical security,” Farber said. “People invest a lot of time and energy protecting and buying firewalls and antivirus. But very little thought is put into ‘Hey, the computer has died, now what do we do? And a lot of people think ‘Well, the computer died, the information must be dead.’ And that’s just not true.”

(Click LISTEN to hear Farber’s take on doing business with the government as well as an explanation of how his company’s recycling system works.

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