May 29, 2007
Sometimes We Must Destroy to Start Anew
Recent security breaches on campus remind us that we can’t be too careful with information entrusted to us. Users tell me over and over that their computers don’t have any important information on them. Tell that to the University lawyers that have to deal with Federal laws like Sarbanes-Oxley, the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). Wiping a drive before it leaves the home or office just makes good sense.
While watching a recent episode of DL.TV, I was reminded of an important little app the tech team carries around for destroying hard drives. Actually it doesn’t physically destroy the drive, just the data residing on the drive. Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN) is a free utility that wipes the hard drive of data. DBAN will boot from a CD or 3.5″ floppy disk and has the capabilty to do a DoD7 (Department of Defense 7 pass wipe) or a Gutmann 35 pass wipe, both of which are overkill and would take way too many hours to be practical. DBAN’s “quick erase” mode is suffient for most purposes.
DL.TV also mentioned a new utility that I look forward to trying; the Disc Drive Secure Erase tool from the Center For Magnetic Recording Research. The DDSE uses the drive’s internal instruction set to render its data unusable.
