Secure data erasing & destruction

Why deleting  or formatting is no good

In 2007 Research by BT and the University of Glamorgan revealed that a significant number of hard disks which are bought second-hand contain sensitive company and personal information.

Amongst the information found on the analysed disks were salary details, financial company data, bank and credit account details, hospital/medical data, pornography, visa applications and online purchasing details.

For a significant proportion of the disks that were examined, the information had not been effectively removed and as a result, both organisations and individuals were exposed to a range of potential crimes.  These organisations had also failed to meet their statutory, regulatory and legal obligations.

Our Secure Data Erase service will remove all traces of your data for total peace of mind.

We begin with discussing your requirements, including any specific regulatory criteria that may be applicable to your industry. We believe it is essential that tailored solutions are created, not only to protect your business and reputation but also to control your costs.

 

What we do

We use an overwriting process in accordance with UK Government standards (HMG Infosec 5 Baseline or Enhanced).  At the end of the process we will provide you with a Certificate of Completion detailing the individual equipment and serial number of each computer processed.

If there are any sectors of the disk that cannot be accessed (bad sectors) then data may be retrievable.  Our software issues a warning in this case, and the drive is removed for physical destruction.

This process is only guaranteed should the entire cycle complete.  If the process fails due to the condition of the disk, then the disk is removed for physical destruction.

Finally, this process can only be run if the drive is seen by the computer, we open all equipment cases to verify the physical number of drives.

 

UK standards

An overwrite process is used, effectively a series of writes across the entire disc, replacing all data.  For increased security, multiple passes of 1’s and 0’s are specified.

In the UK, government recommendations are specified in HMG Information Security Standard 5, which sets out 2 approaches to overwriting:

• Baseline: One overwrite pass with verification pass.  Recommended for Government data classified RESTRICTED
• Enhanced: Three overwrite passes with a verification pass.  Recommended for Government data classified CONFIDENTIAL and SECRET

MyfreedomIT uses software able to wipe to both standards

 

Disk Destruction

Our onsite site hard drive destruction service allows our customers to witness their own drives being destroyed on their premises.  Our CESG approved portable hard drive crusher can destroy over 100 drives per hour and guarantees total hard drive destruction.  It’s not too noisy for the office and plugs into a normal socket.
As you can see from this video, total destruction of the disk is performed in a few seconds:

 

Magnetic media shredding

Unlike disks, tapes are shredded in an industrial shredder.  Our partners arrive at your premises with a magnetic degaussing machine and pass all media through it thus erasing the data in the presence of the client.  The erased tapes are then taken to a secure holding site before being transferred to a specialist company who shred the entire batch in front of our partners staff.