Data Erasure

1. Data Erasure

Data erasure is the process of using specially designed software to overwrite the entire drive / device with pseudo-random “1’s and 0’s, often multiple times, thus eliminating anything meaningful that may have been present.

ITRECYCLA utilizes both hardware and software as appropriate to efficiently and securely erase data from wide range of technologies and devices. Our solutions comply with all major security standards including: US Department of Defence 5220.22M (3-pass), US Department of Defence 5220.22M (7-pass), US NIST 800-88, United Kingdom CESG “Certified” erasing standards Baseline and Enhanced.

Where the erasure process of any drives or devices fails to validate for any reason, it is ITRECYCLA’s policy to remove and shred it.

Advantages of erasure:

Data erasure is a good option where you may wish to see the drive or device re-used by someone else after you’ve finished with it yourself, or if you want to re-deploy it elsewhere.

Disadvantages of erasure:

• Time consuming with erasure of large capacity drives taking several hours to complete
• If any part of the disk or device cannot be addressed by the erasure software (eg bad disk sector / unknown device architecture) then the erasure will be ineffective / unsuccessful.
• There are some questions around the efficacy of erasure for devices that use flash memory to buffer & store data.

Please see data erasure software for more information on the data erasure solutions we use.

Drive Shredding

ITRECYCLA can also shred your drives (or devices) turning them into small metal/plastic fragments.

Advantages:

• Simple and cost effective

Disadvantages

• Whilst standard shredding completely destroys the drive making it impossible to reconstruct, the data will still remain on the fragments of the disk platters, and so could theoretically be recovered.
• Comparatively large fragment size may mean flash memory chips are still intact and theoretically readable

Degaussing

A simple method for securely destroying all data from your Hard Drive or Tape is degaussing. Our Degausser releases a large electrical pulse over your Hard Drive or Data Tape, destroying and sanitizing ALL data at a magnetic level.  It is so powerful, that hard drives usually don’t even spin up after being degaussed.

Our degausser has been independently tested and certified to meet the most stringent security standards including ANSI, CE, PCI-DSS, NIST, HIPPA and many others.

Advantages of degaussing:

• Degaussing is very fast, taking around 20 – 30 seconds per drive
• Cost effective
• Can be performed onsite

Disadvantages

Whilst degaussing is 100% effective on magnetic storage media such as hard disk drives & tapes, it is not effective on flash memory technologies found in solid state drives (SSD’s), hybrid drives or thumb drives.

NZISM Compliant Data Destruction

ITRECYCLA has recently upgraded  their data destruction arsenal to include device disintegration down to 6mm or even 3mm fragments as required by the New Zealand Information Security Manual.

This is backed up by a secure locked quarantine area and comprehensive  procedures

Advantages

• NZISM compliant
• Effective on all technologies
• Virtually impossible to recover / reconstruct any data

Disadvantages

• Requires very expensive & high maintenance equipment, and consequently, there are very few organisations with necessary capability
• More expensive than other options

Please click here for more information on our 6mm & 3mm NZISM Compliant solution.

Degauss & Shred

Deleting vs Erasing

Deleting means you only remove the path to the data but the data will be intact and recoverable until you overwrite it. Data erasure is overwriting the data in every sector of the drive.

Why not shredding the hard drive?

Of course shredding will make the data unrecoverable but it will also make the machine not reusable. If you erase the data with YOUWIPE you are able to resell the hardware.

Introducing ITRecycla’s Data Erasure Software Youwipe

YouWipe regulation compliance

• Complies with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (Document 52012PC0011)
• Meets and exceeds requirements set in Article 17 ”Right to be forgoten and to erasure”
• Ensures regulatory compliance with data destruction, reporting and auditing capabilities
• Complies with the secure data removal requirements as stated by ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA and SOX
• Follows Cryptographic Erase Guidelines accepted by the Federal Agencies of EU and US

Technical Features

• Complies with multiple international define overwriting standards
• Supports SSD, SATA, ATA, IDE, SCSI, USB, FC, RAID
• Simoultaneous erasure of multiple disks
• Automatic erasure verification
• Unlimited disk drive size