To be abundantly clear, the NISPOM text itself never described any specific methods for sanitization. Devised by Peter Gutmann and Colin Plumb and presented in the paper Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory in July 1996, overwriting with three eraser passes was included as one option for data disposal.īecause of Gutmann and Plumb’s work, early (19) editions of the DoD 5220.22-M, National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (NISPOM) did include sanitization methods (including overwriting): within the Defense Security Service (DSS) Clearing and Sanitization Matrix (not text) inserted after Section 8-306,” according to Wikipedia.

In the 1990s, the early days of data destruction, as people look for secure ways to permanently erase data from hard drives, overwriting was indeed considered. The Defense Security manual specifically disavowed overwriting as an acceptable method of sanitation for magnetic media in the June 2007 edition of DSS Clearing and Sanitization Matrix (C&SM).

It claims that the NISP Operating Manual (DoD 5220.22-M) advocates overwriting hard disk drives as a secure method of media sanitation. It’s been replaced by modern standards like the NSA/CSS policy manual 9-12 storage device sanitization and destruction manual.īut like the urban legend of the alligators in the New York sewer system, the data wiping myth persists. That is why at Liquid Technology, our data wiping efforts always meet or exceed DoD standards (as well as the more modern NIST standards), in order to ensure privacy for the company, employees, and clients who need to destroy sensitive data from used hardware and IT equipment.Wiping standards have been debunked by the DoD. However, because the DoD standard has been around since the 1990s, some of its requirements are no longer up-to-date with today’s changing technology and security needs. The goal of the DoD standard is that meaningful data should not be able to be recovered once it has been overwritten. The DoD established this standard in the 1990s to ensure data protection through random overwriting methods as companies disposed of old computers. Department of Defense for securely erasing data from a hard drive. A DoD wipe refers to permanently erasing data from hardware in accordance with the “DoD standard,” otherwise known as DoD 5220.22-M, which is the standard set by the U.S.

Dod erase hard drive