How Reliable and Safe are Online File Shredders

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When organizations seek solutions for securely disposing of unnecessary data, they often turn to free file shredder programs. However, when the primary goal is to guarantee the absolute privacy and irrevocable destruction of data, careful consideration is essential when selecting a file shredder program. It must possess both reliability and efficiency to meet the necessary criteria. This blog aims to investigate the safety of free online file shredders and explore methods for eliminating data accessibility after deletion. Join us on this journey to ensure data security and privacy.

Why does the need for data sanitization arise?

To begin with, it’s essential to guarantee the irretrievability of data in situations such as:

• The data is no longer needed, but it consists of confidential information and credentials.
• The data comprises critical strategic information that could pose a security risk if it falls into the hands of intruders or individuals without proper authorization.
• When an organization intends to discard its outdated desktop computers, laptops, hard drives, flash drives, storage devices, and so forth.
• When an organization intends to allocate its desktop computers, laptops, hard drives, flash drives, storage devices, and more to new users.

Sanitizing data is a crucial and smart practice, ensuring that sensitive information remains protected and cannot be exploited for malicious purposes. Thus, the approach is to delete data permanently from PC.

Typically, individuals who use personal computers employ the “Delete” function on their systems or devices to eliminate unwanted data. Upon deletion, the file is relocated to the Recycle Bin, where it can be restored within a specified timeframe. But you need to delete files permanently from your Windows recycle bin. When you utilize the Delete command to permanently remove a file, it erases the underlying bits or data instances within the file, and the operating system reflects the file as deleted. Retrieving these deleted files is possible through a variety of data recovery tools. However, when dealing with the disposal of sensitive, vital, confidential, or strategically significant data, simple deletion cannot be trusted, as it can still be recovered using data recovery tools.

Read Also : Why File Shredding Is Important in Organizations?

A perfect file shredder should render the file completely unavailable and inaccessible, ensuring that it cannot be recovered or retrieved under any circumstances.
So, if you need to permanently eliminate data from your computer or storage devices with no possibility of recovery, consider using robust and trustworthy file shredding tools.

Different terms used interchangeably for data shredding are data or file wiping/removing/ erasing/sanitizing. Basically, there are four methods of data sanitization:

This method involves:

• Breaking or fragmenting the device itself into bits and pieces.
• Exposing the storage device to a strong magnetic field with the help of degaussers to erase data on a hard disk drive (HDD) etc.

Pros	Cons
Data is erased or destroyed completely forever.	Renders storage media are useless forever. Expensive and complicated process. Not eco-friendly.

Data erasure

In this method, with the help of data erasure software, random 0s and 1s are written on each and every sector of the storage device.

Pros	Cons
Very reliable as it replaces complete data at the byte level. Leaves the device reusable.	It is a time-consuming process. It is difficult to carry out this process.

Cryptographic erasure

This procedure involves employing a robust encryption key to secure all the data stored on the device. The encryption key is composed of at least 128 bits and is subsequently disposed of. To recover the data, you will require this key for decryption, and disposing of it makes the data on the device unattainable.

Pros	Cons
It is an expeditious and effective process. Suitable for removable or portable storage devices. Suitable for highly sensitive information.	It relies on an encryption feature that is related to the storage device. There are chances of failure in scenarios like errors committed by users, issues with key management, the intervention of malicious actors, and acquiring the key before its disposal. It does not fulfill regulatory standards of data sanitization as the data still exists on the device.

Data masking

This procedure entails rearranging characters, substituting words, and dispersing content randomly. It maintains the framework of the initial data while introducing random alterations. For instance, substitutions and shuffling could entail replacing certain names with randomly selected alternatives, substituting numerical values or designations with different or shuffled numbers, and so forth. This data cannot be reorganized to recover the original version.

PROS

• A highly effective method to shred files.
• Can be performed during the usage of device data.
• Less time-consuming.
• Easy to use.
An ideal file shredder

When safeguarding the confidentiality and privacy of your data is a top priority, it’s essential to choose a dependable and robust file shredder instead of relying on any free online file shredder. Kernel File Shredder is one such reliable and efficient tool that is one of the Best File Eraser Software for Windows in 2022. It provides customized shredding which can be performed at desired scheduled time, and it saves information on shredding. The shredding algorithm it uses ranges from zeros to DoD 5220 to Peter Gutman and deletes data on all kinds of storage devices and makes the same unavailable beyond recovery.

Free Download 100% Secure

Conclusion

A top-tier file shredder should completely and irrevocably eliminate your files or data from your device or storage media, leaving no possibility for recovery under any circumstances. It accomplishes this by repeatedly overwriting the files with random binary data to the point where they become inaccessible and irretrievable by even the most robust data recovery tools. We trust that you grasp the importance of thoroughly shredding files and how to achieve it, ensuring no chance of recovering the shredded data.