BITRASER^®Data Erasure Standards

The GOST-R-50739-95 is a set of data erasure standards outlined by Russian State Technical Commission classification to protect against unauthorized access to information. This data sanitization algorithm is implemented with 2 Passes by overwriting with zeroes in Pass1 and random characters in Pass 2. GOST R 50739-95, however, does not specify a requirement for a "verification" pass after the information has been overwritten.

The process consists of seven Passes or overwriting cycles. This 7 Pass standard was released by The German Federal Office for IT Security in the year 2000. Each wipe, in the first 6 Passes, reverses the bit pattern of previous wipe. The final 7^th Pass amplifies the overwriting effect. VSITR algorithm is widely considered to be a secure method of erasing data but requires a considerable time for execution.

The US Army AR 380-19 data erasure method is defined & published by the US Army in the Army Regulation 380-19 of 1998. This data erasure algorithm destroys the data in 3 passes with Pass 1 involving overwriting with random character, Pass 2 involving overwriting with specified character on the drive and final Pass 3 overwriting with the complement of specified character. Finally, verification of overwriting is done.

The AFSSI-5020 was defined by the United States Air Force (USAF) in the Air Force System Security Instruction 5020 in the year 1996. This data sanitization method for permanent data erasure involves 3 Passes. The Pass 1 overwriting cycles overwrites with zeroes, Pass 2 overwrites with ones, and final Pass 3 overwrites with pseudo-random values but in a different order. It’s similar to the DoD 5220.22-M.

CSEC ITSG-06 was issued by the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada to replace the Royal Canadian Mounted Police standard RCMP TSSIT OPS-II in 2017. This method involves writing either 0 or 1 in the first pass, followed by the complement of the previously written character in the second pass, followed by a third pass of a random character. It then verifies the overwriting process. Read More

NSA 130-1 is a data sanitization standard that was developed by the National Security Agency (NSA). This method uses a 3 pass overwrite to permanently wipe data. The first two passes are overwritten using a random value and the third pass uses a known value, then a verification pass is done to verify the results.

British HMG IS5 (Enhanced) is another method of data sanitization as prescribed in the sensitive information document published by the Communications Electronics Security Group as part of the National Cyber Security Centre. It is a three pass overwriting algorithm, in which the first pass involves overwriting with zeroes, the second pass involves overwriting with ones and the last pass with random data along with verification. British HMG IS5 3 pass is much more enhanced than the baseline method.

Speed of wiping with random characters is fast next to zeroes, as additional computations to generate randomness makes it a little slower. Data erasure in this scheme involves 1 Pass where overwriting is done with random characters. Software-based overwriting with a stream of random characters is yet another simple method of Permanent data erasure. By overwriting the data on the storage device, the data is rendered unrecoverable and achieves data sanitization.

The NCSC-TG-025 sanitization method was originally developed by US National Security Agency (NSA). In the year 2000, it was for the first time defined in the Forest Green Book, which was published by the National Computer Security Center (NCSC), then a part of United States NSA. It involves 3 Passes with verification at each write. Pass 1 involves overwrite of zeroes, Pass 2 overwrites with ones and Pass 3 involves overwrite with random character.

Random Random Zero method of data erasure is a process of overwriting media with patterns of random character and zeroes in 6 different Passes. The standard defines the implementation of six secure overwriting Passes. It is initiated by an overwriting of random characters over two different overwriting cycles or Passes. It is then succeeded by the third Pass which overwrites with ‘zeroes’. The same pattern is then repeated over the next successive three passes of overwriting with random, random and zero, making it a total of 6 Passes of overwriting.