Scrub those old computers!

Just another word of warning to companies and individuals who sell, give away or throw away old computers. Make sure you thoroughly scrub the hard drives please! Just yesterday I was helping a friend who purchased a laptop from a friend and didn't have the passwords necessary to login. After helping them determine the passwords we created a new user account and logged into the laptop. Behold my surprise when I saw the Cisco VPN client on the laptop with all of the configuration information necessary to connect to the old owner's corporate network!

I know everyone hears this all the time but corporate IT managers have to enact policies and procedures to ensure that old laptops are scrubbed before getting rid of them. Harder to control are personal computers used at home by employees outside of the control of IT. Just one unprotected laptop could cause major headaches for IT if it falls into the wrong hands.