![]() ![]() High-profile incidents of data theft include: Companies spend large amounts of money to make sure their data is erased when they discard disks. If data erasure does not occur when a disk is retired or lost, an organization or user faces a possibility that the data will be stolen and compromised, leading to identity theft, loss of corporate reputation, threats to regulatory compliance and financial impacts. Also, compromised networks and laptop theft and loss, as well as that of other portable media, are increasingly common sources of data breaches. Increased storage of sensitive data, combined with rapid technological change and the shorter lifespan of IT assets, has driven the need for permanent data erasure of electronic devices as they are retired or refurbished. These can inadvertently or intentionally make their way onto other media such as printers, USB, flash, Zip, Jaz, and REV drives. ![]() Social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank details, medical history and classified information are often stored on computer hard drives or servers. Information technology assets commonly hold large volumes of confidential data. Theft of an SED results in a physical asset loss, but the stored data is inaccessible without the decryption key that is not stored on a SED, assuming there are no effective attacks against AES or its implementation in the drive hardware. Changing the encryption key renders inaccessible all data stored on a SED, which is an easy and very fast method for achieving a 100% data erasure. Drives with this capability are known as self-encrypting drives ( SEDs) they are present on most modern enterprise-level laptops and are increasingly used in the enterprise to protect the data. Presently, dedicated hardware/firmware encryption solutions can perform a 256-bit full AES encryption faster than the drive electronics can write the data. When encryption is in place, data erasure acts as a complement to crypto-shredding, or the practice of 'deleting' data by (only) deleting or overwriting the encryption keys. Hardware/ firmware encryption built into the drive itself or integrated controllers is a popular solution with no degradation in performance at all. ![]() Data erasure tools can also target specific data on a disk for routine erasure, providing a hacking protection method that is less time-consuming than software encryption. To protect the data on lost or stolen media, some data erasure applications remotely destroy the data if the password is incorrectly entered. Good software should provide verification of data removal, which is necessary for meeting certain standards. Many data eradication programs also provide multiple overwrites so that they support recognized government and industry standards, though a single-pass overwrite is widely considered to be sufficient for modern hard disk drives. There are key differentiators between data erasure and other overwriting methods, which can leave data intact and raise the risk of data breach, identity theft or failure to achieve regulatory compliance. Software-based overwriting uses a software application to write a stream of zeros, ones or meaningless pseudorandom data onto all sectors of a hard disk drive. New flash memory-based media implementations, such as solid-state drives or USB flash drives, can cause data erasure techniques to fail allowing remnant data to be recoverable. Unlike degaussing and physical destruction, which render the storage media unusable, data erasure removes all information while leaving the disk operable. Permanent data erasure goes beyond basic file deletion commands, which only remove direct pointers to the data disk sectors and make the data recovery possible with common software tools. Verify the overwriting method has been successful and removed data across the entire device.Allow for selection of a specific standard, based on unique needs, and.Ideally, software designed for data erasure should: By overwriting the data on the storage device, the data is rendered irrecoverable. JSTOR ( November 2022) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)ĭata erasure (sometimes referred to as data clearing, data wiping, or data destruction) is a software-based method of data sanitization that aims to completely destroy all electronic data residing on a hard disk drive or other digital media by overwriting data onto all sectors of the device in an irreversible process.Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification. ![]()
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