Securely Delete Sensitive Data On An Industrial Scale

By Author: James Vaughn
Total Articles: 4
Comment this article

Every organization holds sensitive data, some of which may be subject to strict regulatory compliance. As such, every company needs a secure data disposal strategy. This ensures that any data that is no longer needed is deleted securely so that it can never be recovered. This is also a legal requirement where regulations like CCPA and GDPR apply, where people can legally request that companies delete any personally identifiable data that pertains to them. However, legal regulations are far from being the only reasons why you need a secure asset disposal program. It is important to remember that any data can be recovered from a drive that has been formatted using conventional means. For example, if you are selling or donating old hard drives and other storage devices, the last thing you want is unknown third parties getting their hands on potentially sensitive corporate data.

Active@ KillDisk Industrial is a scalable and high-end solution that can erase up to 100 disks in parallel, making it ideal for large enterprises and data center environments. There are ...
... also hardware-based solutions. This includes a desktop-based system with five to 25 hard drive slots, allowing you to erase multiple drives in parallel. There is also a rack-mountable hardware solution that can securely erase up to 25 drives in parallel. But the most flexible solution, designed for the most demanding environments, can delete up to 100 drives at the same time, and you can use it on your own hardware. This includes any desktop or server, or a dedicated storage area network or network-attacked storage system. Whichever option you need, they all achieve the same thing, albeit at varying degrees of scale. This is a flexible solution designed for large-scale deletion of data according to over 20 globally recognized erasure standards.

Active@ KillDisk Industrial performs multiple passes to ensure that data can never be recovered. With each pass, it overwrites the original contents of the drive with zeros. By contrast, a regular formatting operation does nothing more than simply delete the file system and master file table, so the data can easily be recovered until it is completely overwritten. This can happen months or even years after the drive was formatted and the data supposedly deleted. The only way to be sure is by conducting several passes of disk-wide overwriting operations or otherwise have the drive physically destroyed or degaussed. However, these operations also mean the drives will never be usable again, so you will not be able to reuse, donate, or sell them. Active@ KillDisk Industrial provides an environmentally-friendly and sustainable solution, allowing you to recuperate some of your investment.

Active@ KillDisk Industrial version 5.0, released on October 20, now lets you resume disk erasures to continue interrupted operations. It supports digitally signed PDF certificates to validate deletions, and there is now a built-in web-based process for remotely monitoring and controlling the entire process. The event journal has been improved, and there is better detection and handling for faulty drives. To find out more about the many improvements, visit https://www.killdisk-industrial.com/software/index.html.