CentOS - May 2018 - OT: hardware: sanitizing a dead SSD?

Probably too late for consideration at this point, but there are Enterprise
Class SSDs available with DoD/NSA certified/approved self encryption
capability.  The concept is that encryption is a hardware feature of the
drive, when you want to dispose of it, you throw away the key.  This allows
vendors to receive broken drives back from GOV/MIL clients securely so that
failure methods can be researched.

Dell and EMC have been presenting this to us at storage briefs for a couple
of years now.

--Sean


On Thu, May 10, 2018 at 8:00 AM <centos-request at centos.org> wrote:
> From: m.roth at 5-cent.us
> To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Wed, 9 May 2018 11:35:21 -0400
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] OT: hardware: sanitizing a dead SSD?
> James Szinger wrote:
> > Disclaimer: My $dayjob is with a government contractor, but I am
speaking
> > as  private citizen.
> >
> > Talk to your organization's computer security people.  They will
have a
> > standard procedure for getting rid of dead disks.  We on the internet
> > can't > know what they are.  I'm betting it involves some
degree of
> paperwork.
> >
> > Around here, I give the disks to my local computer support who in turn
> > give them the institutional disk destruction team.  I also zero-fill
the
> disk
> > if possible, but that's not an official requirement.  The disk
remains
> > sensitive until the process is complete.
> >
> Federal contractor here, too. (I'm the OP). For disks that work, shred
or
> DBAN is what we use. For dead disks, we do the paperwork, and get them
> deGaussed. SSD's are a brand new issue. We haven't had to deal with
them
> yet, but it's surely coming, so we might as well figure it out now.
>
>       mark
>
>

Sean wrote:
> Probably too late for consideration at this point, but there are
> Enterprise Class SSDs available with DoD/NSA certified/approved self
encryption
> capability.  The concept is that encryption is a hardware feature of the
> drive, when you want to dispose of it, you throw away the key.  This
> allows vendors to receive broken drives back from GOV/MIL clients
securely so
> that failure methods can be researched.
>
> Dell and EMC have been presenting this to us at storage briefs for a
> couple of years now.
>
On the one hand, it's certainly not too late - we're trying to figure
out
what to do *before* it happens, so we don't run around like chickens with
their head cut off when it does.

On the other hand... static, and unchanging, right, and how many minutes
of Amazon S3 will it take to break the encryption?

      mark