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Content Security

Secure Content Handling & Hard Drive Chain of Custody

By Staple IT··7 min read

Hard drives still move between facilities every day. Chain-of-custody discipline — labelling, logging, sealing — turns a high-risk handoff into a defensible one.

Cloud transfer is everywhere, but physical drives still move between labs, vendors, and DI suites. The discipline you apply to them is what auditors look at first.

Minimum viable chain of custody

  • Unique serial label on every drive — yours, not just the manufacturer's.
  • Tamper-evident bag, signed and timestamped at every handoff.
  • Encryption at rest; key delivered out of band.
  • Logged check-in and check-out at facility reception.
  • Documented destruction or return after the project closes.

None of this is expensive. All of it is the difference between 'we lost a drive' and 'we lost a film'.

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