Computer Physical Security Products

Introduction – The products described here are for extreme physical security, not really for Internet security against hacking, viruses, trojans etc. These are very expensive products relatively speaking. They allow for the fast destruction of data from hard drives. This is a “they are breaking the door down” type of device for fast stressful elimination of data from a hard drive. This may be useful to some of you especially Diplomats who travel in high risk countries like dictatorships, police states etc.

DefenDisk – This product can be found in Google by searching for defendisk. This is a removable tabletop hard drive that connects to your computer using the USB port. This product will completely destroy all the data on the drive in 30 seconds. You hit a button and then you are free to do other things during these stressful moments. The device houses a 3.5-inch drive. It is plug and play. The degaussing field is 3000 gauss at the surface. It requires the throwing of two switches to destroy the data for extra protection from errors. You can remove the drive device and lock it in a safe when not using it. List price is over $6,000.

Not sure if competitive discounts can be found. A degausser will reverse the magnetic field to scramble the data and make it unreadable. The beauty of this product is that the degausser is built into the drive ready to go at any time. You do not need to open the computer and remove the hard drive and then find the degausser machine and install the drive and run it. For destroying hard drive data at a amore leisurely pace say if you have the whole afternoon and a home workshop you can use a drill and drill holes in the drive, many holes, then hit it with a hammer repeatedly like 100 times. After this it can go into the Weber barbecue for melting. The Defendisk is always ready, quite effective and fast.

DX-CD2 Disc Data Destroyer – This device is to destroy the data on a CD Rom. Various methods normally used like shredding, dimpling etc leave 15% to 100% of the data recoverable. Dimpling puts square impressions on the CD and this allows for recovery of 85%+ of the data, not secure. Strip cut shredders allow for recovery of 65%+ of the data, not so good. A cross cut shredder allows for recovery of 35% to 65% of the data, also not good. Serious cross cut shredders which are expensive and cuts the medium into very small pieces allows for recovery of 15% to 40% of the data and this level of security has some value for sure but it is still far from enough. Grinding which grinds off the entire coating layer and chemical substrate layer from the surface of the CD allows for no data recovery at all and this is very acceptable. DVD’s have to be split and then ground but then it will work on them as well.

Of course there has to be motivation and a budget available to do this recovery. So do not think throwing your CD’s into a regular $99 cross cut paper shredder is enough, it’s not if someone is motivated enough to go through your garbage. Generally once the garbage collectors have your garbage it legally is not yours anymore. What this little device does is grind down the data layer on the CD to 250 microns leaving too little for recovery. It takes 18 seconds for a CD to be destroyed beyond recovery. The cost is about $2000 list price. The thought is one could get a commercial sander and mount a CD in a vise. Then you could sand down the CD a lot rotating the CD in the vise to get it all or 90% of it. The other idea is to put your CD into the Weber grill and barbecue it thoroughly until it becomes dust. A cheap blow torch should also be effective. This type of device is for someone who has to work fast under stress like they have 15 CD’s to destroy fast while they are beating at your door, not for the casual user.

Software Hard Drive Overwrite Programs – These programs overwrite the hard drive with a lot of meaningless data. They are acceptable for most but not very secure. The hard drive can still be examined with an electronic microscope and other methods to retrieve pieces of data. Again how motivated are your adversaries and how much time and money are they willing to spend. These programs will overwrite a drive as many times as you want. Seven should be the minimum number of passes over the drive. A large drive can take 12 to 24 hours. A more secure method is to set it for 35 passes, which could take days. This method is excellent for a first layer of defense if you have time. Next after this you can get into something more physical like degaussing or physical destruction. Again time can be everything and this is a time consuming process.

Flash Drives - When you overwrite a flash drive with new data the old data is gone forever. Flash does not use magnets. So called secure USB drives have encryption running on them and are password protected. The software they use is open source in many instances. However if there a back door installed I do not know, so this means I do not trust them. For casual use (like protection if you lose the drive and a stranger finds it) these devices might be ok but not for serious protection.

You could use a trusted open source code free product like Truecrypt to encrypt a section of your USB drive and then it would be secure. It uses powerful encryption algorithms like AES – 256, Serpent and Blowfish that are verified open source code and this way we know there are no back doors because you are doing the encryption yourself. These algorithms have never been cracked. It can also create a hidden volume inside the drive that is encrypted that would escape detection by an untrained computer forensics expert. Trucrypt can also be used to create reliable on the fly encryption on your hard drive. This means the hard drive constantly encrypting all the time it is running.

When you see a product that makes it easy for you like an encrypted flash drive be careful – there can be backdoors. Same applies to those cell phones with built in encryption.

Secure, Private Email: staff@panamalegal.org To protect your privacy, you can communicate with us on our private email server. PGP encryption is available for this address. Our PGP key is available here.   Free, easy voice communication: Skype is a free and easy to use piece of communication software that lets you talk to us by voice or type in a chat with us. The voice quality is excellent and it is free to use. Skype has encryption so the ISP has no idea what was said or typed. This is casual security only. When using Skype be sure to: 1. Go to your system preferences and make sure the correct microphone and speakers are enabled. 2. Go to Skype preferences and make sure the correct microphone and speakers are enabled and the volume is up. Please make the free Skype test call to see if it is working correctly. Our Skype user name is: PanamaLaw.org   http://zfoneproject.com You can use Yahoo Messenger Voice chat with zFone for VOIP communication with encryption. Zfone is open source code software which means no back doors. Together you will have unbeatable military grade encryption. This is the best secure encrypted communications method out there. YMessenger: panamalaworg For complete details, download links and step-by-step instructions, See this page.

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