It’s the opposite of data protection: data destruction. Paragon Software’s Disk Wiper will completely and irrevocably delete data from solid state or disk drives, laughing at GDPR and supporting military-grade wiping algorithms.
Organisations dealing with classified or confidential data, such as banks, governmental agencies, military organisations, and others need to wipe confidential data off a hard drive they are going to be using for other purposes or retiring, and to do so completely, leaving no data traces.
But several forensic tools on the market make it possible to read information on a drive even after the data has been nominally successfully erased, according to Paragon. And wiping information from SSDs carries additional complexity.
According to the company declares that regularly wiping an SSD is not just the occasional necessity but an important routine maintenance step to sanitise the drive, which improves performance
You can run multiple over-writes on disk drive blocks to cleanse them. But SSDs have a fundamentally different structure than traditional hard drives, and data cleansing by multiple overwriting is not ideal.
Any additional writing cycle reduces the durability of the SSD. Also, with traditional approaches it is not possible to delete a specific sector on an SSD because sequential and cyclic writing on SSDs allows for uniform use of the SSD cells.
The SSD-delete function in the new Disk Wiper connects directly to the drive’s internal controller, and therefore deletes data on an SSD reliably and without compromising the durability and functionality of the SSD. Disk Wiper Business (DWB) sanitises SSDs without affecting their operating life and frees up space by clearing remnants of deleted files and directories.
The GDPR angle
GDPR requires EU companies to erase all personal data per customer’s request. Disk Wiper can be integrated into any CRM system enabling the permanent erasure of any type of information, with a report declaring the operation has been successfully executed and completed.
Disk Wiper Professional (DWP) protects your data assets securely and erases sensitive data whether on a HDD or SSD permanently, so no forensic or any other expert tool can detect any traces.
It overwrites all on-drive sectors with random patterns. A device that has been so sanitized will have no usable data remaining on it.
Admin staff can use DWP’s interface to set up drive santizing procedures.
Military angle
Paragon says military and government standards always require 100 per cent residual data verification. For example, corrupted sectors are to be logged to keep the user informed since these sectors may also contain classified information.
Disk Wiper enables the user to create bootable media on a CD/DVD/ flash drive that can later be used to boot in BIOS/uEFI mode using any bootable embedded or external device supporting these media.
It supports various military-grade wiping algorithms:
- US DoD 5220.22-M
- US Navy standards NAVSO P-5239-26
- British HMG Infosec Standard No. 5
- German VSItR Standard
- Australian ASCI 33
- Peter Gutmann’s algorithm
- Bruce Schneier’s algorithm
