Are you Erasing Your Sensitive Data in a Right Way?

In this digital age, the hard drive are the most common source of storage media worldwide. Day in and day out many storage devices are dying due to multitude reasons. Are we enough aware about what happens to our data when we sell or dispose-off to local dealers. There is a high possibility of data breach by cyber criminals who are always looking for valuable data.

Let’s start, what we understand about data deletion. Many of us are still using old and traditional tricks like shift delete, formatting, reformatting, FORMAT, FDISK and Delete Command for removing the sensitive data. Is it a Right Way? The answer is NO. Advanced data recovery tool are smart enough to recover after these methods. So this way our hard earned data is leaked and sold by bad goons for their profit. Then what’s next.

Don’t be afraid and scared for what you have done in past. You can secure your data by next time using some secure and highly efficient way of complete data deletion. No one can recovered your data after performing these activities either mechanically or by taking help of software.

How to completely erase your old data? Still confused, follow these quick and simple methods to live a stress free life.

1)      Physical Destruction – One of the most common and easiest way of data destruction. With just a few handful of equipment’s, all the work will done.  Simply place the drive on wooden base and smash a powerful hit. BANG. You need to very sure, till the time all the internal elements like read/write head, platter and spindle are broke into pieces and completely dislocated from their original position. It will be a fun to break it many parts. You can hit hard, as powerful as you can.

2)      Degaussing – Degaussing, also sometimes called as demagnetizing. This process needs a Degausser device which generate a powerful magnetic field, which magnetically erases data from various magnetic media supported storage devices. This process is comparatively fast, as many companies are claiming to erase up to 250 drives per hour. While there are few of its disadvantages also, like the hard drive can’t be reused for future and thus it also increase E-waste. So this can be only used like the above one, when your drive comes near to its life-cycle. 

3)      Shredding – Another mechanical way of data deletion, where disk is turned into small slices once it passed through a powerful machine. There are two ways of doing. First one is shearing which slices entire drive into smaller pieces with thousands of lb.’s of giant force. Secure way to make data unrecoverable after this. Second method is crushing method which powerfully make punches with irreplaceable holes on the surface of the disk. The Drive patter is completely vanished. Huge amount of E-waste are also produced, but few companies are now started recycling it.

4)      Data Erasing Software – One of the finest and productive way of data deletion. Exerts always call it Eco-Friendly method. They are based on the principle of overwriting the drive with random 0’s and 1’s. This will be done multiple times, like 3 passes or maximum 35 passes. While one pass is enough for data deletion, but many times overwriting, gives total satisfaction that it can’t be recovered. Once the old data are erased, the hard drive can be reused again for storage purposes.

The software approach are quickly gaining very much popularity specially to cooperate world, where they are legally bound by various obligations from auditing firms before retiring their old components. To safeguard against such information security compromises, various international laws and policies have been put in place by various governments. Any data breach by organization can result in hefty penalty under laws such as SOX, HIPAA, GLBA, JPIPA, EU-DPA, IS027001, IT-Act, PCi-DSS, ISAE 3402-3416.

Various reputed software companies are developing certified data erasing software, separately for home user and enterprise versions. Few of the names which I had tried in past are BitRaser, Eraser, fileshredder etc. They all works well with satisfactory results of complete data deletion.

Before, doing any above activity, always take the backup of important data, which you may require in future. Once gone, it’s gone forever.

How to Wipe Your Secret Windows Data Completely

If you are thinking of selling your old PC or you may think of donating to any NGO, beware that your data maybe theft by cyber criminal criminals and your confidential information may be leaked. These bad guys are always looking for data from old computers or laptops. You may be become the victim of identity theft and eventually lost heavily because of this small mistake and this leads in the revealing of our various login details, credit card numbers, any personal information and much more to the suspicious person, there is a secure solution for all your worries by using reliable data erasing software

For most of the Windows user, like you and me, the meaning of permanent deletion is deleting data from recycle bin, shift delete or formatting of the drive. This activity only deletes the reference to the file. A delete command simply erases the pointers to files thus making it impossible for the OS to locate the data. The actual 0’s and 1’s aren’t technically erased, it was just hidden from immediate view to an operating system. It can be still present in your hard drive. Let’s explain it in a simpler way, it is like tearing an index page of the book, but the content is still present in the book.

The best way to permanent deletion of data is to overwrite the data contain in hard drive. It can be done by using data erasing software that replace the secret data with random 0’s and 1’s.

Different Data Erasing Techniques:-

There is a slight chance of data recovery even after complete hard drive destruction, may be your secret data is recovered by someone who may misuse that information for later for any suspicious activity.

1) Physical Destruction of Drive – The most easiest and cheapest method of data deletion is a physical destruction, which can be easily done by common instruments which are available in every household. This process is traditionally done even in many advanced countries and a major percentage of the world population are still using this approach. It is a good way to reduce your stress by hammering a hard drive with a nail on a hard drive. Although, this process completely destroys the read-write head, but the chances of data recovery from platter is still possible. Also, this process helps in encouraging E-waste and thus eventually lead to more heaps of waste. It is the easiest way to destroy a large amount of data.

2) Software Overwrite Process – The most advanced and effective way of data deletion which use a powerful algorithm to overwrite the existing data with random 0’s and 1‘s. Some software even uses 3 passes or 7 passes overwriting process, after which there is no chance of data recovery. The advantage of this method is it can be used in your home/office/small organization/shops with no theft of your secret data being shared with any suspicious person, which can be shared with anyone by chance when you visit a service center.

3) Magnetic destruction of Drive – It is a process of deleting unwanted magnetic field data stored on a disk drive or other storage media. No matter what data you have, this data destruction scheme fully erased the data, which is out of the reach of data recovery. One limitation of this process is that it need an expert level person to perform a data erasing task.

Need of Data erasing Software

Disk erasing is the most secure way to erase the data from hard disk permanently.

Disk erasing process overwrites the entire hard drive with the binary data (0 or 1). This process typically overwrites MBR (Master Boot Record) partition table and sectors of the hard-drive. MBR is a small program that executes at the time of system booting. It presents in the first sector of the hard disk. So, a software that can access all areas on the hard drive and bypass BIOS and OS would be optimum to perform complete data erasure.

Conclusion: - While it was totally a user choice which method he/she want to adopt to securely erase their sensitive data, but as a responsible citizen of the country, it will be our responsibility to use an environment-friendly process with minimum E-waste.