If a company or organisation has a decent data/information security policy in place (Like ISO27001 for example) they should have a secure destruction/disposal policy as part of that.

The current fiasco reminds me of the digital camera sold on eBay containing terrorist information from the MI6!

The recent discovery of a computer on eBay with data on a U.S. missile system underscores the importance of securing data when it is time to retire and dispose of a machine. Enterprises need to have proper plans and oversight in place to protect their information.

When reports that data on a U.S. missile system was found on a computer auctioned on eBay, enterprises were provided another example of what happens when they fail to securely manage data at the end of its life.

In this case, the consequences were nil, as the computer in question was purchased as part of a research project and has been turned over to the FBI. Still, the situation underscores the importance of having policies in place to protect data that extend all the way to the “death” of an organization’s machines.

The kind of information floating around in computers really needs to be kept under a tighter control, how can missile systems data be left on a computer sold on eBay? It just seems ridiculous.

Companies dealing with confidential information generally have data disposal policies in place, why do government organisations dealing with World security not have tight policies regarding disposal of decommissioned hardware?

For sensitive data, it’s best to do it using a disk degausser or seven-way random write algorithm, which some operating systems support either through tools or the command line, noted Forrester analyst Andrew Jaquith. There are also third-party tools that do this as well, he said.

“There’s also the physical option,” he added. “A sledgehammer to the memory card or hard disk is quite effective. It’s also usually faster and arguably more satisfying.”

Another layer of protection can also be found in encryption. Deguassing or physically shredding a drive can be costly, said Seagate’s Gianna DaGiau said. Overwriting a drive also may be incomplete if it doesn’t cover reallocated sectors or is thwarted by drive errors.

“Some corporations have concluded the only way to securely retire drives is to keep them in their control, storing them indefinitely,” said DaGiau, Seagate’s senior manager of enterprise security. “This cannot be considered truly secure, as large numbers of drives in close proximity can easily tempt employees and lead to some drives being lost or stolen.”

A 7 pass overwrite will be good enough in most situations, tools are available to do this for free like DBAN and Eraser so there is really NO excuse not to do it.

Personally if it’s important I’d recommend 7-pass overwrite, then degauss then bang the shit out of it with a baseball bat then burn it up (a blowtorch would be good).

I’d say your data should be pretty secure then, downside is no-one would want it buy it on eBay after you did that.

Source: eWeek