The dangers of top secret information held on photocopier hard drives being leaked has been highlighted by one of Bermuda's top office supply companies.

Bob Legere, general manager of Office Solutions, has been busy educating his customers and the public through advertising about the risks of personal or confidential data stored in the memory banks of copy machines being disclosed and what safeguards can be put in place to avoid the issue in the first place.

An investigative report by CBS News revealed a number of situations where a used batch of copy machines were sitting in a warehouse somewhere ready for resale still containing hard drives storing an image of every document they had copied, scanned or e-mailed.

Almost every digital copier produced since 2002 has a hard drive and the investigation found that it could be a gold mine for identity thieves, with access to the likes of social security numbers, birth certificates, bank records and income tax forms, as well as other highly sensitive information.

CBS teamed up with John Juntunen, owner of Digital Copier Security, who bought several second-hand photocopiers from a warehouse in New Jersey, and downloaded tens of thousands of documents from their hard drives in less than 12 hours using a forensic software program available for free on the Internet.

They uncovered everything from detailed domestic violence complaints and a list of wanted sex offenders belonging to the Buffalo, New York, Police Sex Crimes Division, a list of targets in a major drug raid drawn up by the Buffalo Police Narcotics Unit, and design plans for a building near Ground Zero in Manhattan; 95 pages of pay stubs with names, addresses and social security numbers; and $40,000 in copied cheques, from a machine previously used by a New York construction company.

A copy machine which had belonged to Affinity Health Plan, a New York insurance company, contained 300 pages of individual medical records, ranging from drug prescriptions, to blood test results, and even a cancer diagnosis.

Mr. Legere said that Sharp — one of his company's main product lines — has achieved the highest rating in the security industry for erasing its hard drive data, and was used in the White House and the Pentagon, whereas some manufacturers did not offer a way of scrubbing their hard drives of information.

He stressed the importance of ensuring that any data which had been captured on the hard drive of a copy machine was cleared to prevent it being downloaded and looked at.

"It is a huge security risk for people that don't understand the exposure," he said.

Mr. Legere said a number of Bermuda-based companies needed to maintain their confidentiality and he had been making the point to them that they required a secure machine with the ability to scrub the hard drive.

He said his company erased any information stored on used hard drives before they were sold on or leased out again as standard or to remove it altogether on a client's request.

"Following the investigative report which appeared on the CBS, the following day we had as many as 20 businesses call us wanting to know more about our policy and the risk of their information on hard drives being exposed when they are returned after a lease," he said.

"We were very busy last week explaining to various people about our security processes for these machines."

Mr. Legere added that his company offers a device that guarantees the hard drives are cleaned following every use.

Office Solutions is owned by Bermuda Press Holdings Ltd., the parent company of this newspaper.

For more information on data security of copy machines or to get hold of a device to clean the hard drives contact Office Solutions on 292-2666.