International standards in data destruction
Sanitizing methods
Active@ KillDisk works with dozens of international sanitizing methods for clearing and sanitizing data including the US DoD 5220.22-M and NIST 800-88 standards. You can be sure that once you erase a disk with Active@ KillDisk all the sensitive information is destroyed forever.
Active@ KillDisk is a professional security application that destroys data permanently from any computer that can be started using a boot USB or CD/DVD. Access to the drive's data is made on the physical level via the BIOS Settings (Basic Input-Output Subsystem) bypassing the operating system’s logical drive structure organization. Regardless of the operating system, file systems or machine types, this utility can destroy all data on all storage devices. It does not matter which operating systems or file systems are located on the machine which disks being sanitized.
Active@ KillDisk supports the following international sanitizing methods:
- One Pass Zeros or One Pass Random
- US DoD 5220.22-M
- Canadian CSEC ITSG-06
- Canadian OPS-II
- British HMG IS5 Baseline>
- British HMG IS5 Enhanced
- Russian GOST p50739-95
- US Army AR380-19
- US Air Force 5020
- NAVSO P-5329-26 RL
- NCSC-TG-025
- NSA 130-2
- NIST 800-88
- German VSITR
- Bruce Schneier
- Peter Gutmann
- Australian ISM-6.2.93
- IEEE Std 2883-2022
- User Defined
User Defined erase method
Active@ KillDisk offers User Defined erase method where user indicates the number of times the write head passes over each sector. Each overwriting pass is performed with a buffer containing user-defined or random characters. User Defined method allows to define any kind of new erase algorithms based on user requirements.
Secure Erase for SSD
Active@ KillDisk offers low-level ATA Secure Erase (ANSI ATA, SE) method for Solid State Drives (SSD). According to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-88: Guidelines for Media Sanitation, Secure Erase is "An overwrite technology using firmware based process to overwrite a hard drive. Is a drive command defined in the ANSI ATA and SCSI disk drive interface specifications, which runs inside drive hardware. It completes in about 1/8 the time of 5220 block erasure." The guidelines also state that "degaussing and executing the firmware Secure Erase command (for ATA drives only) are acceptable methods for purging." ATA Secure Erase (SE) is designed for SSD controllers. The SSD controller resets all memory cells making them empty. In fact, this method restores the SSD to the factory state, not only deleting data but also returning the original performance. When implemented correctly, this standard processes all memory, including service areas and protected sectors.