Anyone can print “secure, certified, NIST-compliant” on a homepage. These are the questions that actually separate companies, with the answers a good one gives — and ours, including the ones where our answer isn't the best available.
You want a document listing each drive by make, model, serial number, destruction method and result. Anyone doing this properly has one ready. A refusal, or a generic letter with no serials, tells you everything.
R2v3, e-Stewards and NAID AAA are the real ones and they are verifiable in public registries. A certified company volunteers the number. "We follow NIST 800-88" is not a certification — it's a standard anyone can claim.
Ask who drives the truck and who processes the drives. Subcontracting isn't automatically bad, but you should know who is actually handling your data and whether they're vetted.
You want a specific answer about downstream recycling. Vagueness here is how electronics end up exported or dumped, which is your reputational problem as much as theirs.
An honest answer involves conditionality, because nobody prices a server sight unseen. What matters is whether the basis is explained up front or the revision arrives after your equipment is on their truck.
A high headline offer with collection billed separately can net out below a lower all-in number. Get the whole thing in one figure.
Even if you don't need it, the answer tells you whether they own equipment or just a van. When on-site matters.
General liability and, ideally, cover that contemplates a data incident. Ask for a certificate of insurance if the job is significant.
Sealed containers, signed transfer at collection, a logged handover at the facility. You want to hear a process, not a reassurance.
A BAA for healthcare, an NDA, or your own vendor terms. A company that won't sign anything is telling you something.
You want a stated turnaround from audit to payment, and a method. Indefinite answers here tend to stay indefinite.
A law firm wants to hear from a law firm. Any established company has someone willing to take the call.
Ask for three things: a sample certificate of destruction showing individual serial numbers, the name and number of any certification they claim, and a clear answer on what happens to equipment with no resale value. A real operator provides all three quickly. Also check whether they do the work themselves or subcontract it, and whether collection and data destruction are included in the price or billed separately.
The audited ones are R2v3 and e-Stewards for responsible recycling and reuse, and NAID AAA for data destruction specifically. All are verifiable in public registries, so ask for the certificate number. NIST SP 800-88 is frequently cited but is a guideline rather than a certification, and any company can claim to follow it, so treat it as a description of method rather than as third-party assurance.
Not automatically, but you should know. Subcontracting means your drives are handled by a company you did not vet and have no agreement with, which matters for both liability and chain of custody. Ask who collects and who processes, and whether the subcontractor is bound by the same terms you were offered.
Be cautious of a strong number offered quickly with few questions asked. Nobody can accurately price a mixed load of used equipment without knowing the configuration and condition, so an unusually confident figure often becomes a revised figure after the equipment has been collected, at which point comparing offers is no longer an option. Ask what the quote assumes and what specifically would change it.
No. SF IT Recovery does not hold R2v3, e-Stewards or NAID AAA certification. Drives are sanitised to the NIST SP 800-88 guidelines or physically destroyed, verified, and documented per drive by serial number, with on-site shredding available across South Florida. If a contract or internal policy requires a certified processor by name, you should use a company that holds that certification.
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