What is Hard Disk Sanitization ?

Summary: This blog educates you on hard disk sanitization to permanently erase data from your hard drive, especially when the information is confidential. It also educates you on the instances that make the process of hard disk sanitization a must.

Although the awareness for hard disk sanitization to permanently erase data from a hard disk is increasing day by day. Several countries have set up recognized standards for the same, even now there are sections of individuals as well as enterprises who are unaware of it. As it plays a significant role in keeping your data safe and secure when you sell, donate, or dispose of your internal or external hard disk drive, its awareness should be increased.

The most noteworthy reason being, if the process of hard disk sanitization is not employed, anyone with bad intentions could extract data from your sold, donated, returned, or disposed of the Hard Drive (internal or external) and use it for their selfish means. Know about it in the sections below.

All That You Need To Know About Hard Disk Sanitization

The process of permanently erasing data from the hard disk by overwriting so that no data can be recovered from it by any means is called hard disk sanitization. To do so, several data erasure methods with advanced algorithms are developed based on the standards set up by different countries. The sanitization of the hard disk becomes a necessity when selling, donating, returning, reusing, or disposing of your hard disk, which is one of the most significant, IT assets. The several reasons for it are as follows:

• Firstly, you could be at risk of losing your personal, private, and confidential information to individuals or enterprises with selfish means if you do not employ the sanitization process. They may extract data from your hard disk and use it for their personal benefit or to malign your reputation.

• Next, your establishment could be at risk of losing a large amount of significant information to unauthorised users as they could recover the data by using any recovery software or services for lost, Shift-deleted, or formatted data.

• Next, every organisation has legal obligations set up by several countries that they should always abide by so as to maintain work culture and task-flow. Organisations must comply with several international laws such as GLBA, HIPPA, and SOX to prevent the breach of your data.

• Further, simply deleting data using Delete or Shift + Delete key simultaneously is unsafe. It does not remove the data from the hard disk completely. Here, only the link to the stored data is lost while the data remains on the disk.

• Next, even formatting does not completely remove the data from the hard drive permanently. It is only a temporary solution for removing data. Even after the disk is formatted, data still resides on it unless it is overwritten.

Note – There exists a condition called Data Remanence wherein data exists even after formatting or erasing the hard disk drive. To handle the issue of data remanence in the hard drives, the employment of the process of hard disk sanitization becomes a must before you or your establishment sells, donate, reuse, return, or dispose of the hard disk, which is the usual practice being followed.

Hard Disk Sanitization by Stellar Data Recovery

Stellar Data Recovery provides Disk Wiping and Disk Degaussing services as a part of Hard Disk sanitization services which has been explained below:

• Disk Wiping – It is the total data erasure for all sensitive, critical, confidential, or classified data.
• Disk Degaussing – It is the total data erasure and disk disposal for all your data at the end of hard disk life cycle.

 Advantages of Hard Disk Sanitization

The several advantages associated with Stellar’s hard disk sanitization services are as follows:

• Prevents leakage of clients’ data, organisations’ classified information, and monetary data.
• Offers you certified services that abide by agreement such as SOX, HIPAA, and GLB Act for the disposal, reuse, and accountability of the hard drive.
• Assures protection from data theft and incorrect destruction of your hard drive.
• Averts hidden costs and loss of money due to the incorrect dumping of your or your organisation’s hard drive.
• Saves enough time and resources required to overwrite the existing data with 0’s and 1’s or destroying the media device.

The Way Forward

While there exist several companies that offer hard disk sanitization services, yet Stellar Data Recovery stands apart as it offers multiple advantages mentioned above. Most importantly, it adheres to several international standards and regulations. These are HIPPA, Gramm Leach Billy Act (GLB), Sarbanes-Oxley, California Security Breach Information Act, Personal Information Protection, and Electronic Documents Act.