Drive eRazer™ for When You Need to Make Sure Your Data is Really Gone
by Bill Ives
We often talk about the new transparency in enterprise 2.0. However, there are times when we need to go the other way and eliminate any access to information. Perhaps you believe the system messages and think that anything put in your trash folder and deleted goes away. Not so. You might need some expertise to find it, but is still there.
I recently spoke with Jon Johnson of WiebeTech, a subsidiary of CRU-DataPort. Jon said that as a test, they bought twenty used drives on eBay and recovered everything from corporate data to email conversations to financial data to legal documents. To correct this problem, WiebeTech’s new Drive eRazer™ hardware solution erases all data from a hard drive quickly and easily. You simply plug it into the hard drive and it does the rest. Here is one of the drives.
Drive eRazer is like a shredder for electronic data, and there is even an incinerator model. Drive eRazer writes over every bit of a drive. Even after one pass, there can be ‘”ghosts” of data that experts can piece together. A second pass approach is available that takes this stuff out completely, even the ghosts. After it’s done, there’s nothing left to recover.
Jon explained that there is a secure erase function on almost all hard drives. It was developed as a standard by the industry. However, it is very hard to access and use as the industry experts did not want people easily able to accidentally delete stuff. Drive eRazer takes advantage of this utility to do its job. This can be important in a variety of contexts and is essential when you want to sell or donate your hard drives.
I certainly learned something. Drive eRazer is compliant with the Department of Defense requirements for “clearing” a “Non-Removable Rigid Disk.” The specification requires destruction of a hard drive containing government classified data.
Founded in 2000, in addition to erasing data, the focus of WiebeTech is delivering high performance portable storage solutions for consumer, business and government markets. WiebeTech also offers computer forensic devices which are critical tools used by criminal investigators collecting suspect data. In 2008, CRU-DataPort acquired WiebeTech to complement its line of data security and data mobility solutions.
