Simply deleting your data before disposing of your device is not enough.
The safest way to ensure your data is not accessible by anyone else is to have it erased before the device leaves your posession. Even certified data erasure companies make mistakes. They might receive hundreds of devices every day and you are trusting the erasure of your data to someone you don't know. If they are having a good day and follow all the processes correctly then you can be sure the job is done correctly but what if they don't? How will you know?
Our technician who visits you to wipe your data will meet you and show you what they do. At the end of the process they will give you a report and show you that your data is erased. Once this has happened you can dispose of your device in any way you like without fear of your data being compromised.
We use Tabernus Data Erasure software.
Tabernus software provides:
Software data erasure gives you a certified certificate of erasure guaranteeing that the erasure was succesful. It also leaves you with a working disc drive which can be safely reused. Depending on the sensitivity of the data, data wiping can be performed once or multiple times to military level specifications, and a report showing that data has been removed provided down to an individual serial numbered disk.
Other methedologies for erasing data basically involve destroying the disc drive either by degaussing (using a large magnetic field) or by mechanical detruction through shredding.
Degaussing leaves you with a disc drive which cannot be reused (the magnetic field destroys the mechanical parts of the drive head) and does not provide you with a certificate showing sucess. By the very nature of degaussing and the way that it destorys the mechanics of the drive it is not possible to test the drive afterwards and therefore prove success. However if the degaussing process is not carried out correctly or the degausser is faulty it is possible for data to still be on the drive and for this data to be accessed forensically. Degaussers need to be recertified once a year to meet the CESG standard but this gives no guarantee of correct function at any time after it is certified.
Mechanical destuction of a disc drive is usually performed by either shredding, bending or punching the drive to make it unusable. This methedology is normally recommended for drives which contain secret or top secret corporate or government information but is not necessary for lower Business Impact Level data (BIL). Bending or punching a drive makes it unusable by normal methods but does not prevent access to the data using forensic techniqes.
Tabernus erasure generates detailed reports and certificates of erasure by device and serial number.
It provides auditable and verifiable assurance that all data was sanitized in compliance with published standards:
Supports all disk drive types, fibre channel, SAS, SATA, SCSI, ATA, and solid state disk (SSD) Automatically collects hard drive erasure information including: Drive size, manufacturer, model number, and serial number Collects asset information from target system BIOS: CPU, Memory, Video Card, and more.
