CBL Data Recovery-Republic Polytechnic collaboration
ConvergenceAsia staff
31/10/2007

CBL Data Recovery Technologies, an international provider of computer data recovery services and Republic Polytechnic (RP) have announced that they are collaborating on the research and development of a tool that will rapidly and securely erase all data from multiple hard disk drives.

This advanced data eraser software utility, based on the CBL Data Shredder program, will protect businesses and government by eliminating the risk to exposure of sensitive information residing on discarded data storage devices.

The deletion of data and reformatting of hard drives does not remove the data from computers contrary to many beliefs. Skilled hackers can retrieve files, even those deleted a long time ago, using data recovery tools easily available on the market.

Businesses and governments must prevent the data in their discarded computers from being accessed, said Ferhana Omar Ashiblie, General Manager, CBL Data Recovery Technologies.

“Some government agencies take extreme measures and use huge grinders to shred their discarded drives, chop old drives in half with an axe, or drive nails into them. With the widespread adoption of RAID systems, CBL’s goal is to equip IT departments in the region and abroad with an easy-to-use, effective and efficient tool to erase data from multiple drives and to ultimately eliminate the embarrassment of having sensitive, confidential information exposed or used by unauthorised individuals or organisations,” he said.

The collaborative data shredding tool will be dedicated to the eradication of all previous data entries and partitions and leave no trace of data on the user’s disk, thereby making it impossible to recover any readable data previously on the disk.

It will be compliant with international data destruction standards and will include a selection of military-grade procedures proposed by US Department of Defense 5220.22-M Standard and well-known information security specialists Bruce Schneier and Peter Gutmann. Subsequent phases of development will include procedures proposed by German VSITR and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s DSX.

The development of this advanced data wipe tool is being carried out by a team of final year students and staff from the School of Information and Communications Technology at Republic Polytechnic, with the guidance and contribution of CBL’s experts.

Mervin Beng, Director of the School of Information & Communications Technology at Republic Polytechnic, said Republic Polytechnic has always taken a unique approach to learning, where we seek to equip our students with the intellect, and practical skills needed to solve real world problems by engaging them in real world projects with the industry.

“We are certain that our students will not only benefit from this collaboration, but also contribute something important and relevant to the industry today,” he added.

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