>From a practical viewpoint – (And I have worked as Systems support, PC Support, and a contractor for corporates.)
Have the organisation provide you with a system to do the erases – complete with software installed, and a means of attaching the drives to be wiped as external drives – USB housing, or drop-in slot, preferably multiple devices so you can process multiple drives from separate interface connections – add in USB controller etc. That way you are: 1) Not personally providing any software for use in the corporate environment – so have no liability as the source/supplier. 2) Can reasonably expect that the system and software have been appropriately licenced/registered by the supplying corporate organisation. 3) Not have to use the client user’s system to do the work – so do not need to install things on their system – You are just transferring their working environment and data to the new hardware 4) You can do the clearance in your own time without delaying the user’s work. 5) Not need the user to be capable of certifying that you have run the software properly, and that the data has been cleared from the system – Either they don’t trust you to do the job, and want your work supervised, or they do trust you, and you don’t need to do it at the client’s desk. Yes – the ‘trust ‘ may need to be by dual sources – the corporate IT, and the department owning the data – Social Services in a council environment being that sort of environment – It comes down to that sort of department requiring their own staff to do the work and certification, or – the preferred option – farming out responsibility – get a 3rd party organisation to do the clearance and certification Maybe that is where you come in – and if so, willingness to not be totally uptight about regulations, licences etc. is a definite NO! As is the users organisations willingness to have you do that. Now – Re. the “make a copy” – email the corporate IT requesting they supply the copy as part of the working tools they want you to use, alternatively declare to the source that you will be using the copy for business, and arrange for an invoice to be sent – to you, or your employers. And – Reading the detail below I note the systems are to be returned to the owners, so where is the need to do the clearance within that 2 hour time limit. Presuming you have a working area – new system and returned system storage area – why not do the clearance in that area where you can, presumably run many systems clearances concurrently. Additionally, it may be that the supplier of the systems could consider wiping the drive completely – including any restore partition, driver store and boot facility was actually damaging the system. A format of the user accessed partition (not Quick) should be adequate for normal working environment. For a more secure process – the del *.* option and then multiply copying a base file to the drive using a different name each time until the drive is full, then doing the format adds to the likelihood that the data will be unrecoverable using a forensic approach and equipment. Then you get to SSD’s with their ‘extra memory’ and memory mapping to avoid excessive wear on the memory – have fun trying to certify that all data has been removed from one of them! JimB From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of D R Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 3:28 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Freeware in a corporate setting Mark, You are right, I do need to give you some more information, so here goes: The computer/laptops are on lease. They need to be 'swapped out', hence the end-users are getting new equipment that is on lease. The instructions specify that the old hard drives need to be wiped. No del *.* or formatting is allowed. These are the instructions I received on the first day: 1. Bring black markers 2. Bring packing tape and a taping gun 3. Make a copy of UBCD, latest version on CD. Bring that with you onsite. You are to use it to wipe the drive. DO NOT FORMAT THE HARD DRIVE. DRIVE MUST BE WIPED. 4. 2 hour time limit on each computer you work on. Ok to go 2.5 hours, but if longer than that call helpdesk number for approval. 5. After capture of user profile data, swap out old equipment wit new equipment and perform restore. After restore is done, have user open all applications and determine that their data is back on the new equipment. Once they are satisfied that their data is there wipe the hard drive with the software that you brought. 6. Package old equipment in shipping container that new equipment came in and apply supplied shipping label to box. I will be glad to supply more info if anyone desires it. Daniel
