It looks like a hokey appliance.

You can't accidentally mixup shredded and unerased drives and have
stuff
slip though by accident, you can with whatever that device is.

Lastly, what's the value on a old used drive in the first place? 12
cents?



Well, Let's see. It is an appliance,true. But hokey.....Perhaps we should
evaluate this statement..... Let's consider the options. Software is
inadequate to sanitize a drive as there is a hig probability that
artifacts can be recovered post process. Physical Destruction when
conducted properly will provide absolute data loss, but then again, you
will have no drive left. Degaussing is tricky, as the degausser must be
of satisfactory power to achieve coercion of data sectors on the media
surface. With current ultra high density storage, the power necessary to
achieve coercion requires a device capable of 7,000-10,000 oersted of
energy. A device of this sort, would be more than most of our annual
salaries.

Due to the lack of clear guidance and the need for a reliable means to
purge hard drives, Secure Erase had been developed, and is part of the
ATA spec. The problem is, that despite the good intentions behind
creating this technology, the risk of it being exploited by virus or
malware is significant, and many computer and BIOS manufacturers inhibit
the storage interface from issuing the Secure Erase initiation commands
to any storage device connected to the host. Likewise, certain host
controllers inhibit external commands from addressing the Protected
Service areas (PSA) on the drive. These regions include the Host
Protected Area (HPA) where OS image data, and other system diagnostic and
utilities may have been placed by the manufacturer, the Device Control
Overlay (DCO) slack area, which may have additional storage regions
beyond the reported storage limits, and the G-List sectors that may
contain data written to them before being locked and declared bad. Each
of these PSA regions can be host to sensitive data, and should be wiped.


So, considering the limitations due to BIOS or hardware incompatibility
Secure Erase can not be effectively used to purge all platforms in the
field. Hence the reason EDT designed an appliance that is BIOS
independent and is capable of initiating SE on any ATA Spec drive (built
after 2001) processed. Once processed, the appliance issues an adhesive
certificate of destruction that is affixed to the drive. Each device
processed has its serial number logged in an audit log retained in the
appliances flash. As the flash is not accessible through the console, its
integrity is assured. Validation of processed vs non-processed devices is
only a matter of verifying that the serial number on the destruction
certificate matches the serial number on the drive, and both can be
compared against the audit log (which can be exported to an external USB
storage device).

The point you made is excellent, most folks don't consider the potential
for human error. And as such, the potential for human error is the very
reason most decommissioning technologies are not approved beyond the
lower security classification levels. In fact if we consider the
potential for 3rd party loss of unprotected storage devices on route to
physical destruction facilities, or the possibility that a drive
provided to a physical destruction provider did not have its serial
number properly logged due to human error, the risk is huge. At least
with the Dead on Demand technology, there are 2 points of evidence that
the device had been processed.

As for the after market value of a used drive... well the current figure
is presently between 13 -34 cents per Gig. Go figure....

So, is it a hokey appliance, in my opinion it is not, as it provides
public and private sector clients the means to have a portable single
point of destruction that can be shipped from site-to-site, or
department-to-department as evergreen cycles are conducted, or as
equipment is sold or repurposed.

But... please don't take my word for it. Ask any of the clients who are
currently using the appliance as part of their compliance model.




--
Ryk Edelstein