Large Philippine Conglomerate Donates Servers and PCs Confidently While Ensuring Privacy Compliance

Ayala Corporation is one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines with businesses in real estate, financial services, telecommunications and a broad range of investments. The company also has a deep commitment to corporate social responsibility and supporting the welfare of the surrounding community. While this is largely expressed through a separate foundation with programs in education, youth leadership, sustainable livelihood and art and culture, Ayala Corporation also contributes previously owned but highly operational IT hardware so other organizations can use them.

Challenge

As a highly respected holding company, Ayala handles very sensitive financial information about itself and its subsidiaries. This information is stored on Ayala servers, as well as on hard disk drives, SSDs, servers and company executive desktops and laptops. It’s critical that this data be securely and permanently erased before donating technology assets.

Maria Angelica B. Rapadas, Chief Information Officer and Executive Director for Ayala, sought out a way to both rigorously protect company information and generously give to those in need—all while complying with privacy laws governing the company’s highly-regulated industry segments.

“We wanted a secure and proven technology to erase storage devices of various equipment before these are donated, reassigned or disposed of,” she said. “The old methods used were no longer acceptable and foolproof, given the sophistication of today’s criminals.”

Solution

Thanks to a recommendation from Globe Telecom, one of Ayala’s subsidiaries, Rapadas turned to Blancco data erasure solutions. Using Blancco Drive Eraser for its PCs and servers, Ayala has been securely erasing all data on its storage devices in a cost-effective, secure and eco-friendly manner since early 2016.

“With Blancco, we are assured that no residual data remains in these devices before they are distributed to beneficiaries,” said Rapadas. “Blancco gives us peace of mind that our data is secure and only present in authorized devices. All other devices that used to contain our data have been erased completely and that data cannot be recovered.”

What’s more, in late 2016, when the Philippines finalized implementing rules and regulations of its Data Privacy Act of 2012, Ayala was already in good standing, thanks to the erasure processes it had been able to quickly put in place.

“The Blancco line of products is easy to use, and the support has been excellent. Our Helpdesk staff were able to use the solution very quickly after the initial training. Our Account Manager has been responsive and provided timely assistance when needed,” Rapadas said. “When the Data Privacy Act was enacted, we were glad that we already had Blancco to ensure compliance with the law.”

Blancco Drive Eraser ensured that Ayala’s sensitive data was permanently erased from servers, laptops, desktops and drives, providing an audit trail of all activity. Each erasure is verified and certified, with Ayala receiving a tamper-proof Certificate of Erasure to prove compliance with local, national and global data protection regulations, as well as internal requirements.

Ayala Corporation’s experience with Blancco’s data erasure solutions echoes that of the subsidiary that recommended Blancco at the beginning. In fact, Ayala aims to replicate that experience in other environments.

“We are now looking at Blancco LUN to ensure that the same level of data erasure compliance is achieved for our servers on the cloud,” Rapadas stated.

“We wanted a secure and proven technology to erase storage devices of various equipment before these are donated, reassigned or disposed of… With Blancco, we are assured that no residual data remains in these devices before they are distributed to beneficiaries.”

Maria Angelica B. Rapadas, Chief Information Officer and Executive Director, Ayala Corporation

About Blancco Drive Eraser

Blancco Drive Eraser is a robust data sanitization solution for any PC, laptop, server or storage environment. With Blancco Drive Eraser, organizations can add an extra level of protection to their endpoint security policies by permanently erasing sensitive data from HDDs and complex SSDs in desktop/laptop computers and servers. Through our patented SSD erasure process, there is now a secure method to sanitize data on storage devices—regardless of underlying technology—to safely resell, repurpose or dispose of drives.

About Blancco LUN Eraser

Blancco LUN Eraser allows organizations to erase data in active storage environments while allowing the operating system to remain intact. Following completion of the data erasure process using Blancco LUN Eraser, LUNs are immediately available for reuse, giving organizations the ability to operate with the least amount of downtime possible. Blancco LUN Eraser supports the broadest platforms and can run from WinPE and target data based on organizational data policy requirements.

About Ayala

Ayala Corporation is one of the largest and most diversified business groups in the Philippines, with business interests in real estate, banking, telecommunications, water, power, industrial technologies, infrastructure, healthcare, and education. Its social commitment arm, Ayala Foundation, has programs that focus on education, youth leadership, sustainable livelihood, and the promotion of arts and culture. With headquarters in Makati City and operations mainly in the Philippines, it continues to grow its regional and global footprint, serving millions of customers across all market segments.

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About Blancco

Blancco is the industry standard in data erasure and mobile device diagnostics. Blancco data erasure solutions provide thousands of organizations with the tools they need to add an additional layer of security to their endpoint security policies through secure erasure of IT assets. All erasures are verified and certified through a tamper-proof audit trail.

Blancco data erasure solutions have been tested, certified, approved and recommended by 15+ governing bodies and leading organizations around the world. No other data erasure software can boast this level of compliance with the rigorous requirements set by government agencies, legal authorities and independent testing laboratories.