Personal and institutional privacy and security become more important with each passing day, it seems, and one of optical media's strongest selling points—its durability—isn't necessarily an advantage when you want to get rid of sensitive data. While not exactly indestructible, DVDs and CDs aren't easy things to destroy without a tin snips, and merely tossing them in the trash leaves all that data vulnerable to anybody with a pair of rubber gloves and an axe to grind. And since a DVD can hold the equivalent of more than 500 file cabinets' worth of data, the potential risks presented by just one 4-3/4" disc are enormous.

Enter Alera's DVD/CD shredder. It doesn't literally "shred" discs like a paper shredder, but it does destroy the data layers on optical media, including 80mm discs and business-card CDs. And since it handles up to 30 discs a minute, it's more efficient than erasing rewritable media.

While intended primarily for corporate and government applications where data security is paramount, the DVD/CD Shredder is small and inexpensive enough for home use, too. According to some studies, identity theft affected more than a million U.S. citizens in 2001, so while destroying discs that contain phone lists, medical information and personal finance records might seem like overkill, it's more like a reasonable measure of self-protection.

www.aleratec.com

MSRP: $59.99