Why data wiping is so important
When we discuss about the data recovery techniques we assure the user that the data can be recovered with some general or some specific data recovery efforts. But data recovery is not always a desired and expected feature for everyone.
There may be a lot of people or organizations that are always willing to erase the data of their disk in such a way that it should not be recovered by any how. In such cases very sensitive data might previously stored on the disk, which if goes in wrong hands may harm the organization or user by misusing the information.
As we know that the requirement of more and more space in hard disks is increasing day by day. As the result of this, the older small capacity drives are replaced by new large capacity disks on a large scale every year in almost every organization. If these older disks are got by some wrong hands, it may create a very serious problem for that organization.
According to news published by CNET News.com, on January 16, 2003, Massachusetts Institute of Technology students Simon Garfinkel and Abbi Shelat have been purchasing old hard drives, in the name of research, from the Web and other second-hand sales to uncover the huge amounts of personal information people do not bother to erase.
After buying 158 drives for around US$1000, they managed to collect over 5000 credit card number, medical records, detailed personal and corporate financial information and several gigabytes of e-mails, source codes and other information.
The pair of these students has compiled their findings into a report entitled "Remembrance of Data Passed: A Study of Disk Sanitation" published in the February edition of IEEE Security and Privacy.
The main points that have come out of the research are that the second-hand market for hard drives is filled with personal information making it very easy for a malicious buyer to assume the identity of someone else.
|
