Decommissioned Hard Drives: How to Know Your Data is Destroyed Without Toxic Waste or High Costs

Sponsored byDecommissioned Hard Drives: How To KNOW your Data is

Destroyed without Creating Toxic Waste or High Cost

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Preview of key points

Stockpile in a storage room “until we figure out what to do with them”

Degauss Physical destruction (aka “shredding”) Data erasure

Stockpile in a storage room “until we figure out what to do with them”

What is the cost of the storage space? Do you have an inventory with serial numbers of all

devices? If a drive goes missing would you know? If a drive is temporarily removed and copied would

you know? Who as has access to the room? When jobs change is that access revoked? Do you have a log of all entries to the room? Potentially valuable assets depreciate while sitting

there

Degauss

Costly equipment Periodic calibration required

No verification data really destroyed What training does the operator need? What kind of proof is produced that the drive was

actually degaussed At all Properly for that device

Can the drive be recycled after degaussing? Re-used? Only precious metals?

Do you only have magnetic drives? No SSD?

Physical Destruction

Expensive equipment Maintenance

Safety concerns to operators? Flash chips are really small

Are they destroyed? What do you do with the shredded pieces?

Can you really recycle shredded drive material? Offered as an on-site service

How expensive? How long must you stockpile drives?

Degaussing and Shredding

Different levels of green Same stockpile issues until processed Do you have an inventory with serial numbers of all

devices processed?

Data erasure

Processed drives have greatest recycle value and options

But What does it take to REALLY erase the data beyond

retrieval? What training is required? Cost of software? Associated equipment? What about different kinds of drives?

SSD RAID arrays Remapped sectors Hidden areas?

Different form factors ATA SATA SCSI Fibrechannel

Flash/non-volatile/solid state memory erasure

More complicated than HDD in terms of data erasure “overprovisioned,” memory capacity accessible only

by the SSD Hidden from host


Tentative techniques Delete and format – problematic like HDDs Degaussing – unaffected Physical destruction

“The smallest package (BGAE63) is 10mm on a side. This means that particle sizes less than 10 mm will ensure that no flash packages remains intact. To be conservative, we recommend 75% of this value or 7.5mm.” - Destroying Flash Memory-Based Storage Devices, Steven Swanson

ATA’s Secure Erase – no standardized implementation


Requirements Removal of BIOS

freeze locks Device specific

implementation OEM cooperation


http://www2.blancco.com/Data-Erasure-for-Enterprise-SSD


It all depends on the software

Free – DBAN http://www.dban.org/

http://www.dban.org/


It all depends on the software

Free – DBAN http://www.dban.org/



Data Erasure

Is data erasure an option? It’s all about

When you do the erasure The software

What’s the different between using something like DBAN for data erasure and just shredding the drive?

Process is largely the same Many of the risks are shared Just a different physical result Re-use issue

Enterprise data erasure is a whole new way of looking at things

Enterprise Comprehensive Physical Disk Management

Erase drives the moment they are decommissioned Eliminate need for specialized equipment Multiple form factor / connection technologies

Eliminate stockpiling Even temporary Erase the drive while it’s still connected

Enterprise Comprehensive Physical Disk Management

Reduce/eliminate human based processing and error Training

Eliminate human based record keeping Centralized, enterprise-wide documentation of every

drive and its serial number Commissioned date Decommissioned and erased date Certified

Trustworthy confirmation Automated process run software Serial number Accurate and granular down to the sector level

Additional Data Erasure Resources

(Whitepaper) Data Erasure for Enterprise SSDs: Believe It and Achieve It


(On-Demand Webinar) Recovering Confidential Data From a Re-formatted Hard Drive: How to Really Erase Data

http://www2.blancco.com/en/webinar/recovering-confidential-data-from-a-re-formatted-hard-drive-how-to-really-erase-data

(Free Trial) Blancco 5 or Blancco Mobile Evaluation

http://www2.blancco.com/blancco-5-blancco-mobile







