The retirement of IT assets for storage, sale or destruction implies a risk for the owning company should the information contained on the hard drive could become available to third parties.

It is estimated that in Spain, over 60% of hard drives originating from equipment out of use and put back on the market have not been data wiped adequately and that it is possible to recover part or all of the information that it contained.

Generally there are no established processed for data destruction. A simple format of the hard drive is carried out, allowing the recovery of the data, there are no adequate controls and the data wiping is not documented.

What are the requirements for an adequate data wiping solution?

It is necessary to be able to wipe different data support formats.

The program must be capable of wiping all the hidden or locked sectors of the disk.

There musn’t be an existing method that would allow the recovery of the deleted information.

The program must have passed independent certification processes from renowned entities.

Once the data wiping has been carried out:

• The program must verify that the process has been completed successfully and in an irreversible manner.
• The software must generate an automatic and detailed report that relates the data wiping carried out with the serial number of the hard drive that has been treated.
• The data wiping reports must be protected with a MD5 digital signature to avoid any falsification.