HIPAA Hard Drive Wipe Requirements: Keeping Track of Sanitization Additional destruction techniques include disintegrating, pulverizing, melting, or incinerating the hard drive, so that all data has been destroyed. Shredding requires use of a shredding device that must be capable of cutting the devices into as many tiny pieces as possible, without the device becoming stuck in the shredder during the process. Since this technology cannot be sanitized through purging, it must be sanitized through destruction. Degaussing cannot sanitize non-magnetic media such as SSD technology. Instead of using magnetic components, Solid-state drives (i.e., flash drives, SD cards, USB drives) rely on an embedded processor, or “brain”, and interconnected flash memory chips that retain data even when no power is present. Today, many hard drives incorporate solid state drive (SSD) technology. HIPAA Hard Drive Wipe Requirements: DestructionĪnother one of the HIPAA hard drive wipe requirements is known as destruction.

The degaussing process fully erases data. The components of the hard drive are stored as magnetic data. Degaussing exposes the magnetic components of the hard drive to a magnetic field. Purging a hard drive is accomplished through a process known as degaussing. HIPAA Hard Drive Wipe Requirements: PurgingĪnother one of the HIPAA hard drive wipe requirements is known as purging. A limitation of overwriting is that conventional overwriting does not work on non-magnetic hard drives. These commands result in more thorough erasure. NIST recommends that if overwriting is to be performed on magnetic hard drives, that it be accompanied by implementation of dedicated sanitize commands. However, overwriting may not reach all potentially “overwritable” areas on a magnetic hard drive, leading to an incomplete erasure.

The overwriting can be performed once (“in one pass”), or several times (“multiple passes”). Overwriting is the process of recording over previously stored magnetic hard drive data with random or specified patterns. Clearing is the process of using software or hardware products to overwrite media. One of the HIPAA hard drive wipe requirements is known as clearing. HIPAA Hard Drive Wipe Requirements: Clearing

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