Front Lines is a guest viewpoint section offering perspectives on current issues and events from people working on the front lines of Canada's technology industry
It's 11 p.m. Do you know where your data is?
Customers who shopped at Winners and HomeSense stores didn't know their data had fallen into the wrong hands. Many corporations may not realize how far their confidential customer and business data can travel without their knowledge.
Even without the malicious actions of thieves or hackers, digital data can replicate and propagate as it's accessed, managed and used. It becomes a challenge to track every computer on which the information resides.
Tim Margeson is General Manager of Markham, Ontario’s CBL Data Recovery Technologies Inc.
This is especially true at large corporations or government departments and ministries that have thousands of workers and hence thousands of computers. Tracking what information is on each computer is no small task, and corporate policies regarding the use and distribution of confidential information can only do so much to keep data from being accessed by the wrong people.
In every organization, computers and storage devices eventually outlive their usefulness. As storage capacities and processing capabilities evolve, notebooks, desktop computers and enterprise servers are eventually replaced. For a large organization, it could mean several hundred computers are discarded, returned or sold when it's time to upgrade or when the equipment lease expires.
While these retired systems could also simply be warehoused and placed in a storage room to gather dust, many times they are returned after a lease has expired, donated to charity or auctioned off or sold to the general public at large, potentially with sensitive data still residing on the hard drives.
Data on computers, despite frequent loss due to natural disaster, equipment failure or human error, is rather resilient. Data thought irrevocably lost can be, and often is, retrieved by data recovery specialists.
Whether discarded individually or en masse, it's entirely possible these computers and servers still hold business data, unbeknownst to their new owners. Much of that data could be software applications and trivial information, but frequently the information left on these machines is extremely sensitive. Unless stringent steps are taken by users or IT staff, these hard drives could contain data and other sensitive information, whether customer, financial, health or medical records, or even information related to national security or government policy.
When most users delete a file, the contents of the file are not actually removed from the hard drive. The digital file is still there, but it's no longer linked to the file system — the page is in the book, but not in the table of contents. Even if you format a drive, that data is usually not erased until the space is re-used.
To be sure a file is permanently erased, the area of the hard drive's platter where that file is stored must be completely re-written with new data. Until then, it can be recovered by programs that read directly from the drive such as forensic software, data retrieval software or manual data recovery techniques.
There are a number of methods to erase data with certainty so confidential information doesn't fall into the wrong hands. In some cases the computer can be re-used; in other cases it may be necessary to completely destroy the hardware.
The wiping of sensitive data from a computer's hard drive or a removable storage device is the easiest way to ensure data can't be reconstructed through laboratory techniques. Data destruction software can be inexpensive, easy to use for the average computer user and readily available from a number of vendors. Data destruction software will usually securely erase a single file, a group of files or the entire contents from a working hard drive. This can be accomplished by over-writing the entire system storage space or all sectors on the disk. A single re-write pass of a drive is usually sufficient to make sure previous information cannot be retrieved. However, there are several standards which suggest re-writing hard drives three to seven times or more to ensure the data is fully overwritten and non-retrievable.
A more drastic approach to data erasure is degaussing. This method often leaves hard drives completely inoperable, preventing computers from being recycled for educational use, charitable donation or resale to the general public.
While over-writing and degaussing data on hard drives does ensure a very high level of security, there are extreme cases where the destruction of data must be guaranteed and even the slightest chance of retrieval must be eliminated, thus destroying the computer is the best approach.
The storage media may be destroyed using a number of methods, including scraping an abrasive substance directly on the magnetic disk or drum recording surface. Corrosive chemicals can have the same desired effect; however, the entire recording surface must be removed before disposal. Destruction of the drive (or the entire computer) can also be achieved by smelting, disintegration or incineration at a metal destruction facility. While making sure sensitive data does not fall into the wrong hands, it is equally important to make sure that data is no longer needed; if it is, make sure the data is safely backed up or archived elsewhere.
Most of the times organizations are looking to make sure information is accessible to everyone who needs it, whenever and wherever they need it. However, whether it's because of malicious intent, security breaches or lack of policy, digital data sometime wanders into places it shouldn't. The sale or donation of your older computers is undoubtedly environmentally friendly.
The sale or donation of your older computers is the greener choice and mitigates the impact electronic devices have on the environment. Just make sure your data isn't "recycled" too.
Tim Margeson is General Manager of Markham, Ontario's CBL Data Recovery Technologies Inc.. tmargeson@cbltech.com.
