Corporations and small businesses have finally embraced the idea of a written security policy; however, many of these policies still do not account for the destruction of hardware that is no longer functional or compatible. Yes, a typical IT support person will make sure a flash drive, SSD, or mechanical hard drive has at least had its indexes deleted (almost useless), or taken the next step to write zeroes over the entire drive (better). But only few will take the steps necessary to truly secure that sensitive data—complete drive destruction.
Donating used drives is a noble idea, but it involves a great risk. Hackers have long known that used hard drives are a treasure trove of information. Usually, the previous user leaves the data intact; however, even when it has been deleted, it is easily retrieved. Writing random information over a hard drive is effective. But it must be done several times to keep the motivated attacker away from the data, and that takes time, and a functioning drive of course.
“I am thankful the most important key in history was invented. It’s not the key to your house, your car, your boat, your safety deposit box, your bike lock or your private community. It’s the key to order, sanity, and peace of mind. The key is ‘Delete.’”
-Elayne Boosler
Flash Technology
The need for speed has led to the general use of flash technologies, even for sensitive data. SSD and USB thumb drives, are ubiquitous in the business world, but present the security professional with a new challenge; flash memory chips fail, and drives contain buffers for this reason. One component of‘wear leveling’ technology is that the disks controller will ‘turn off’ any sectors deemed defective and transfer the data to a new sector—this leaves the data on the old sector—and now your attempt to write over that data will fail.
Perceived Ease-of-Use
“The degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free from effort.” PEOU is axiomatic, from washing machines to sports cars; PEOU is truly a barrier to any system’s adoption. Even when presented with the facts about used data-storage destruction, decision makers will opt for the easier path—not the more secure one.
Phiston understands that technology needs to be safe and easy to use or people just won’t use it. As a result, they have developed a rack mountable hard disk drive destroyer; the MediaVise® Rackmount HDD Destroyer puts the power of a 20-ton hard disk crusher right in your rack so that secure data destruction is easier than ever. Clean, secure, and shielded from RFI and EMI, the MVR-HDD is at home in any data center, large or small.
Get serious about data destruction and contact Phiston today. For the latest news in data destruction and MediaVise products, follow @PhistonOfficial, and to join in the conversation, find Phiston on Facebook.
