Secure Data Shredding Added to Data Domain De-dupe

Data Domain, Inc. announced the introduction of secure, file-level data shredding capabilities as a feature in its Retention Lock software option. This is the industry’s first inline deduplication storage solution designed to enable electronic data shredding on a per-file basis. This new shredding feature gives organizations the confidence that deleted files have been disposed of in an appropriate manner, helping them maintain confidentiality of classified material, limit liability and enforce privacy requirements.

Data Domain’s approach securely overwrites blocks on disk belonging uniquely to deleted deduplicated files. This way, even small data sets stored inappropriately, for example social security numbers, can be cleared from all disks. As required, safe deduplicated data can be efficiently migrated to another system, quickly freeing the entire original system for proper disposal.

Shredding capabilities are growing in importance for compliance with, for example, the US Department of Defense (DoD) 5220.22-M Clearing and Sanitization Matrix and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-88 Guidelines for Media Sanitization. Data Domain’s secure shredding feature was designed to meet these DoD and NIST standards. Government agencies and businesses can now sanitize confidential data that is accidentally written into an unapproved device or shred any content that is no longer required for internal or external purposes.

Benefits include:

• Simple: Shredding of data happens in-place, with data in its native deduplicated state, avoiding the hassle and expense of setting up additional environments to extract data and deduplicate it again. During the System Sanitization process non-deleted data is available for restore at all times.
• Secure: By leveraging the locking features of Retention Lock, files may also be protected from accidental deletion, ensuring only the correct files are shredded.
• File-level: An authorized administrator can remove only the unique content of deleted files from the deduplicated environment, using a DoD/NIST compliant algorithm and procedures.

"Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) estimates that organizations are going archive 100,000 petabytes over the next three years with much of this retention driven by compliance and electronic discovery requirements," said Brian Babineau, senior analyst with ESG. "We believe two of the reasons why companies are saving so much data is they do not have an efficient means to eliminate redundant content with archive storage systems and they cannot completely delete data when the retention policy expires. With its latest release of Retention Lock, Data Domain is solving both of these pain points – a win-win for customers. By following government standards for digital data shredding, customers can be assured that the information does not exist anymore – a third win for those who have been through the process of believing that sensitive or confidential information is gone, only to have it reappear due to incomplete deletion processes."

"Shredding is required for secure deployment of deduplication storage; the alternatives for deletion of specific blocks in a dedupe store are very awkward and costly," said Brian Biles, VP of Product Management at Data Domain. "Data Domain Retention Lock’s shredding features serve to further expand the scope of secure deployments backed by our deduplication storage."

Pricing and Availability
Data Domain Retention Lock software is available today. Pricing starts at $1,500. Existing Retention Lock software users can upgrade to Data Domain OS 4.6 to access the new shredding features at no cost.