Erasing Client Data

Keeping Client safe and secure ultimately means being able to dispose of it.  In the paper days, that meant a shredder.  It is a whole lot more complicated in the digital age, but there is help.

Deleting files and even formatting the disc is just not enough, particularly if you are going to dispose of a hard drive, recycle, or donate a computer.  Those files can still be read with the simplicity of an downloadable software for undeleting files.

You need to actually digitally shred the files.  In order to remove, or shred files permanently from your system you have to use a program that is capable of rewriting the files with random series of binary data multiple times. This process is often called shredding. That way, the actual content of the file has been overwritten and the possibilities to recover such a shredded file are mostly theoretical.

There are good fee solutions like File Shredder which claims "you can remove files from your hard drive without fear they could be recovered.".The author of this program released it free under GNU license and you are welcome to download File Shredder and use it without any restrictions. File Shredder is simple but powerful program.  In File Shredder you can choose between 5 different shredding algorithms, each one gradually stronger than the previous one. It also has integrated Disk Wiper which uses shredding algorithm to wipe unused disk space. More on options of File Shredder check Online Help page.

For more comprehensive protection can be found in ArchiCrypt Shredder. It is very powerful and reasonably priced application suite. If you don't need all the options of ArchiCrypt shredder and prefer separate utilities for important tasks some of best commercial utilities are produced by Blancco. They have really good Data Cleaner for shredding the whole volumes (Hard Disks) and that is something my File Shredder utility is not supposed to do - yet.  Another excellent suite for privacy/file deletion is CyberScrub.  It includes applications for data destruction, evidence cleaner, password manager and antivirus.

- Peter H. Berge

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