Hi, I hope I am not repeated a post in this tread. IMHO, we should look at the confidentiality level of the data contained inside the harddrive. Theoritically, based on Bell-Lapadula model, once the harddrive cleaned or purged, it can be safely used by higher clearance personnel, not but lower or the same level.
However, if the intention is to wipe out the disk completely, destruction will certainly work the best. Few things you can do this, either by using chemical or others. Since harddrive is cheap, and information has a high value, destroying it would be logical. The art is to find the balance, when to destroy and when to reuse. If reuse, at what level of purging it should be done. I share Tim Donahue perspective below. Regards, Leonard Ong Network Security Specialist, APAC NOKIA Email. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mobile. +65 9431 6184 Phone. +65 6723 1724 Fax. +65 6723 1596 -----Original Message----- From: ext Tim Donahue [mailto:TDonahue@;haynesconstruction.com] Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 2:15 AM To: 'Chris Chandler'; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 'Dave Adams'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Interesting One You are using software to try and recover information. If you can recover files after filling the platter with zeros 4 or 5 times and recover it without a direct attack on the platters (ie,using a SEM), then why is it so hard to believe that specialized HARDWARE can recover it after 30 times? At this point, I think it has been determined that the best way (and possibly the only way in the near future) to prevent the recovery of information is the complete and total destruction of the drive. Here is a good question for you though, at what point is it worth just destroying the drive? My guess would be we are at that point now, because we have to use so many resources to be reasonably sure that the data is unrecoverable, that is is cost effective to just destroy the drive and purchase a replacement for it.
