Blancco gets ‘safe’ flash storage data wiping patent

Blancco Technology Group has been awarded a patent by the US Patent Office for the unique, secure and verifiable way its Blancco 5 product erases data from solid state drives.

The US patent confirms that Blancco has a valuable market solution that can be used to support the burgeoning flash storage space, and follows similar Blancco patents also awarded in the EU and Finland separately.

According to analyst IDC, in published figures this month, the total enterprise all flash array (AFA) market generated $955.4 million in factory revenue during the last quarter of 2015 – up 71.9 percent year over year. And the hybrid flash array (HFA) segment continues to be a significant part of the overall enterprise storage market, with $2.9 billion in revenue and 28 percent of market share, IDC said.

Pat Clawson, CEO of Blancco Technology Group, said: “With benefits such as durability, speed, reliability, energy efficiency and better overall performance, it’s no wonder so many organisations favour SSDs over hard disk drives as their preferred data storage device.

“At the same time, budgetary and resource constraints have driven IT administrators to reuse SSDs whenever possible.”

Designed to specifically handle functionality differences across a myriad of SSD vendors, the patented process consists of the following:

· A multi-phase, proprietary SSD erasure approach that utilises all available security protocols supported by SSDs

· Automated techniques to remove system BIOS freeze locks, enabling access to key internal security features of an SSD

· Procedures that root out those drives that give false positives about their internal erasure processes

· Third-party benchmark testing and validation

· A comprehensive tamper-proof report to confirm erasure results, that can serve as an essential part of compliance and auditing requirements

The new US patent (Patent No. 9286231) supports a secure method to handle end-of-life storage devices – regardless of underlying technology – in a cost-effective, secure and eco-friendly manner, said Blancco.

Clawson said: “Unfortunately, knowledge of the proper SSD erasure methods and tools has not been anywhere near as fast or as ubiquitous as the SSD adoption rate. And when free tools/software are used – as they so often are – it makes matters even worse because such tools cannot adequately do the job and leave large amounts of data accessible to a data breach.”

The data wiping technology also makes it safer to pass on and reuse SSDs.

@AntonySavvas