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Date: Saturday, 13 August 2005

Title: WindsorTech's hard-drive disposal business in overdrive

Source: http://www.nj.com/news/times/

Remarks: By TRACEY L. REGAN

EAST WINDSOR - Business is booming for a former scrap metal company that now helps Fortune 1,000 companies protect sensitive data. East Windsor-based WindsorTech erases hard drives for companies that want to get rid of old computers. It also resells the computers that it cleans and refurbished computers, among other services. With federal laws mandating ever-stricter standards for data disposal and Americans grasping the potential pitfalls of discarding their computers jammed with personal data, more and more people are turning to WindsorTech, says Marc Sherman, the company's founder and CEO. The company saw revenue more than double over the first half of this year compared to the similar period in 2004, rising to $16.26 million from $7.54 million. Sherman said he projects revenue of between $50 million and $60 million this year for WindsorTech, up from $23 million last year. "Over the last six to 10 years, people came to realize they must be careful with their paper documents and so they hired shredders and recyclers," Sherman said, adding, "But nobody thought about the hardware behind it." But recent laws that regulate companies' financial disclosure, laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley, also contain provisions mandating the secure disposal of client data. Indeed, a company may be held liable if data on a discarded or resold computer is later misused or the hardware improperly dumped. Sherman said he expects Congress to adopt new laws that better define standards for data destruction. WindsorTech has spent the last year building up a national sales team to market its data protection and regulatory compliance services to newly aware companies. The company now employs about 100 people. For now, corporate clients must send their computers to WindsorTech facilities in East Windsor or Eagan, Minn., to be purged. In the fourth quarter, however, the company plans to launch a mobile data destroyer that will take its disc erasing services directly to companies, Sherman said. WindsorTech has also developed software that will allow individual computer owners to erase their hard drives. It can be downloaded from the Internet. Sherman started WindsorTech four years ago, after first running a computer recycling business in Trenton. That business grew naturally out of a family business, William Sherman and Sons Scrap Metal, founded by his grandfather in Trenton. "We went from scrap to computer recycling and we have been watching the trends in the technology industry," he said.