Data Center Bankruptcy: An Example of Liquid Technology’s Service Results

In 2010, the popular peer-to-peer file sharing company Limewire was forced by the U.S. federal court to shut down its service and to stop distributing its downloadable client program. This resulted in several core challenges for the company, including the overwhelming task of managing the hardware in its New Jersey data center. After filing for bankruptcy, Limewire’s executives approached Liquid Technology to see if we could help them manage its data center bankruptcy liquidation.

Limewire would have liked to have managed the data center’s hardware on its own, but they understood and appreciated the sensitivity of the information that was recorded on its equipment, including the personal data of all of its users. Limewire knew that this data needed to be efficiently destroyed. In addition, due to pending litigation, the company needed some of its hard drives to be pulled and securely stored in the event they would be needed in court.

How Liquid Technology’s Bankruptcy Business Services Rose to the Task

After reviewing Limewire’s equipment and operational goals, Liquid Technology’s Assessment Specialists met with Limewire’s executives and offered them a concise plan for data destruction and liquidation services. As part of the plan, Liquid Technology would take inventory of all the equipment and present a quote to purchase everything.

According to the pending agreement, hard drives that contained sensitive customer information would be wiped in accordance with DOD and NIST guidelines once they were no longer needed in the business’s bankruptcy court proceedings. Subsequently, any drives that needed to be stored would be placed in a custom built cage within Liquid Technology’s secure facility to await further instruction.

Once the asset management agreement between Limewire and Liquid Technology was approved by the bankruptcy court, we performed an immediate de-installation of the company’s data center in New Jersey and the equipment in the company’s New York offices. A check for over $100K was then presented to Limewire directly upon removal of the salvaged equipment. After the equipment was received at Liquid Technology’s New York headquarters, secure data destruction services were performed that met with the Department of Defense’s requirements for data destruction and data storage and an auditable report of the data destruction results was presented to the Limewire executives for their records.