Disk degausser aids security

Stephen Withers
Friday, 09 May 2008 06:00

Business IT - Technology

The disposal of old and faulty disk drives carries a risk that an outsider may be able to recover sensitive data from them. If the potential reward is high enough, there are ways of reading disks that have supposedly been scrubbed clean by repeatedly overwriting the data.

A more thorough job can be done by magnetically erasing the disk, a process that also renders the drive unusable as it destroys the calibration and servo information as well as the user data.

But the hardware needed to achieve this doesn't come cheap.

Kroll Ontrack has just brought the Degausser DG.02 unit to Australia with a $A19,000 price tag.

"The Degausser is the safest insurance that an IT department has for ridding itself of potential legal liability when it comes to information leakage from an end-of-life appliance," said Adrian Briscoe, general manager for Asia Pacific, Kroll Ontrack. "This solution has the capacity to take IT security to the next level of zero tolerance when it comes to a potential data leakage," he claimed.

The device can erase drives and removable magnetic media (including tapes and cassettes) in as little as four seconds.

If you don't dispose of enough equipment to justify the purchase price but you do need assurance that drives and media are thoroughly cleansed before disposal, Kroll Ontrack will take on the job for $A25 per drive, with discounts for quantities. The company offers to certify that the drive in question, as identified by serial number, was erased with a degausser.

Some people like to mechanically damage drives before disposal, but this must be done thoroughly if it is to be successful. An important part of Kroll Ontrack's business is recovering data from damaged drives, and it claims a record of success in dealing with "drives that were crushed, impaled, cracked and seemingly dead."