Modern file systems and storage hardware are excellent at storing data. All of them excel at grabbing and holding sensitive files, as they have been designed to do. Their ability to keep information secure for longer is constantly improving. However, in the time spanning from punch cards to SSDs, very little has improved in their ability to remove data.
The “Delete” feature in operating systems has never really been as advertised. When data is coded on a hard drive, a link is created to a filename which represents that data in the interface. Pressing “Delete” in Windows or Mac systems has the immediate benefit of destroying that link. It does NOT impact the data on the drive.
There are some applications that make bold claims about their data destruction ability. These programs can overwrite media at random. The process takes a set of garbled data and layers it over the top of existing user data, a bit like taking a pen and writing over a written sentence. However, on finishing the process, imprints of the original files remain. The problem is that scores of freely available applications dedicated to recovering these imprints render software data destruction options ineffective.
Physical destruction of the media
However, there is one method of data destruction that is always effective: physical destruction of the media. All existing data becomes unrecoverable after the mutilation of platters of a hard drive or the silicon of an SSD. It is also well-known that even advanced digital forensic techniques fail to read crushed or shredded disks. As great as modern storage mechanisms are, internal parts just can’t perform after mechanical damage.
Putting a piece of paper into a crosscut shredder offers a sense of finality and visible evidence of quick as well as effective documents destruction. Destruction of electronically stored data can be equally simple and complete — with the right equipment.
