Keep Your Data From Prying Eyes With Industrial Disk Sanitization

By Author: James Vaughn
Total Articles: 7
Comment this article

When selling, donating, or disposing of an old computer or any other data-bearing device, most people don't think much about the possibility of the data stored on it ever being retrieved by someone else. Yet cybercriminals routinely target computers and storage devices that have been incorrectly discarded to retrieve the data stored on them. Considering many people and businesses use their computers to store all sorts of confidential data like payment information and personal details, these discarded or second-hand devices can be a treasure trove for prying eyes. The type of device doesn't matter either, since anything that stores digital data may contain valuable information to unauthorized third parties. Depending on the nature of this data, it could be misappropriated in a wide variety of ways, like identity theft or corporate espionage.

What most people don't realize is that data can easily be retrieved from a device that has been formatted. While people usually think to format their old computers and storage devices or reset them to factory defaults before selling or donating them, they often don't know that this ...
... is not enough. Similarly, emptying the recycle bin provides no guarantee that the files will stay deleted. Due to the way modern storage devices work, data stays exactly where it was until something else overwrites it. This can take any amount of time, and it's often possible to run a successful recovery routine after months or even years. That's why both individuals and businesses must think about disk sanitization whenever they are retiring old data-bearing devices like laptops, desktops, smartphones, and external storage devices. If they don't, it's an enormous security and privacy risk.

Active@ KillDisk was developed to erase storage devices securely, according to the rules laid out by various international standards, such as those of the US Department of Defense. In simple terms, proper disk sanitization is the product of multiple byte-by-byte overwrites of every sector on a drive. In other words, it means overwriting the entire device with zeros so that the original data can never be retrieved. Active@ KillDisk aligns with the standards defined by the US DoD 5225.22-M, as well as 20 additional global data sanitization standards. There is also a hardware-based version, and a software-based solution you can install on a NAS or SAN system for erasing multiple drives in parallel. This is ideal for use in large businesses and data centers, where proper disk sanitization can be difficult to achieve and manage at scale.

Active@ KillDisk was updated to version 14. The new version includes a resume disk erase action to continue operations that were interrupted due to malfunction or other factors. New digitally signs PDF certificates with optional encryption and visual signatures can also be printed out. There is also a new secure erase feature for SSDs on Linux and Console editions. Support for faulty disk detection and handling has been improved too, along with a myriad of minor tweaks and bug fixes, and a major boost to performance. The Console, and other associated apps, including Active@ Boot Disk and Active@ LiveCD, have also been updated to the newest versions. Find out more at https://www.killdisk.com/eraser.html.