Data Destruction / Data Wiping

Hard Drive

Here at Kent Information Technology Services  we understand that your PC and Laptop Hard drives are a treasure trove of personal information.  When dealing with Business assets this information could be mission critical or sensitive information that could do a business harm.

That is why we guarantee completely secure, compliant and certified data wiping processes.

We will wipe the data from your IT equipment making it irretrievable. We use different processes depending upon the type of data to destroy.

If you were thinking about donating your old computer equipment before you do so you need to ensure that your personal data is destroyed.  We can even reinstall windows to the erased drive providing you with a clean and working Desktop PC or Laptop.

What is Data Destruction?

Binary Code

All data is stored as binary information, that is 0 and 1.  Through the use of data wiping software these  values can be changed from 0 and 1 to new values.  If you "flip" these values enough times the data becomes unreadable.


Certified and flexible data wiping services

We use a range of secure methods followed by wipe verification; this is Data Protection act 2018 compliant, protecting the owner of the Hard drive from data theft, identify theft or legal action for failure to securely destroy personal data.

We take our data erasure responsibilities very seriously and we make a deliberate effort to stay up to date with the latest understanding of both data erasure and data recovery.

This has led us to developing a very flexible data wiping service, allowing us to always use the best methods for each data storage medium.

We also verify each wipe and if any drive fails digital erasure, it is destroyed and rendered physically unreadable

Data wiping standards

We offer a range of secure, compliant and certified standards based on your company requirements:

  • HM Government IS5 Enhanced (Infosec Standard 5)
  • National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) principles
  • US Department of Defence standard (DoD 5220.22-M)
  • NIST SP 800-88 Rev.2
  • CPNI Standards

Data wiping methods

And we take the same flexible approach to the methods we use:

  • ATA Secure Erase
  • CBL Data Shredder
  • Nwipe / ShredOs
  • Eurosoft ZeroData
  • CCleaner
  • Disk Wipe
  • Eraser
  • KillDisk
  • PCDiskEraser
 

Data storage media can be very different, requiring customised data wiping

We test random samples with data recovery tools to see if any meaningful data can be retrieved; so far, we have never found remnant data on a drive we have wiped.

Although our chosen processes are completely effective, we also know that many organisations have extra requirements, such as the need for drives to be wiped by a certain method or to a certain standard.

We are always able and willing to adapt to whatever your organisations ITAD policies.

What about data erasure and data destruction?

Where required, we utilise the DoD 5220.22-M “method” for data erasure from hard drives. This method of erasure overwrites hard drives with patterns of ones and zeros. The process typically requires three secure overwriting passes and verification at the end of the final pass.

Erasing a hard drive using the DoD 5220.22-M data sanitization method will prevent all software-based file recovery methods from recovering data from the drive, as well as hardware-based recovery methods.

If, for any reason, a drive reports that it failed to wipe successfully, it will also be physically destroyed.

We issue a report listing all the drives, their unique IDs and whether they were wiped or destroyed.

Where necessary for your internal data compliance policies regarding data destruction we can issue you with data destruction certificates showing the outcome of the erasure along with the unique serial numbers of all drives erased.



GDPR and compliance



Our data wipe is General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) compliant, protects you from information theft before you either reuse or recycle the drive.

Our data wipe log details the times and dates that each hard disk drive has been securely data wiped or destroyed and Data Destruction Certificates are available on request.

Please also see the guidance from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC):

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/secure-sanitisation-storage-media


Types of Data Erasure / Data Wiping

We offer two types of Data Wiping:

  • Certified
  • Uncertified

A hard drive erased with the certified option will have a full audit trail whilst one that is uncertified will not.  Both drives will still be wiped with Industry leading software and no data will be recoverable at the end of the process.