Configuring Stormshield Data Shredder

Stormshield Data Shredder guarantees the permanent, irreversible erasure of data that you wish to delete. With it, third parties will not be able to recover, without your knowledge, information that you thought had been deleted.

For more information, refer to the section Permanently deleting files in the SDS Enterprise Advanced user guide.

To configure the permanent deletion of files:

  • Go to Policies > Features > Shredder, and enable the settings of your choice.

Shredding

Allow or disallow the shredding of files, folders, and hidden files.
Drag and drop

Enable or disable the possibility of dragging and dropping files and folders on the Stormshield Data Shredder icon on the Windows desktop.
Miscellaneous

  • Allow or prohibit the interruption of a shredding operation. If interruptions are allowed, the user can click on Stop.

  • Allow or prohibit the use of Stormshield Data Shredder to securely empty the bin. If the option is enabled, the Securely empty the bin pop-up menu will appear on the Shredder icon.
Confirmation request

If the shredding request applies to several files, select the type of confirmation that you wish:

  • Confirm only once for all files: The confirmation of shredding is global.

  • Confirm for each file: The shredding confirmation applies to Individual files. During the operation, the user can still unselect the checkbox Request confirmation for each file to stop confirmation requests for the following files.
Access to Stormshield Data Shredder in Windows

Choose whether to add a Stormshield Data Shredder shortcut to the Windows desktop. The shortcut makes it possible to erase files by dragging and dropping them on the desktop icon.
Shredding list

See the section below to use the shredding list.
Advanced settings

There are several options available for the encryption of read-only files.

You can also customize the secured erasing mode of the files by selecting the number of bytes allowing to replace the content of the files to erase, in three successive rounds. Enter two-character hexadecimal values, separated by semi-colons. The default value is 00:FF:55. It corresponds to the value 0,255,85 in the .json security policy file. For more information on the file in the .json format, see section Stormshield Data Shredderin the Advanced configuration guide.

The shredding list is used to automate the shredding of files, folders or file models identified by a mask via the wildcards “*” and "?".

Files included in the shredding list are automatically shredded at predefined times. You can therefore choose to shred them automatically when the user logs out of their SDS Enterprise account, when the screensaver starts, or when the SDS Enterprise session is locked.

Specify the paths or masks of the files and folders to shred.

EXAMPLES
Full file path: C:\Temp\secret.txt
Folder path: C:\Archives
File mask: C:\Archives\*.bak or "C:\*\*\*.tmp"

For more information on using masks, see the Using Encryption and Decryption Lists section of the File feature.

You can manually add additional settings directly to the policy file in JSON format. For example, you can configure a confirmation prompt before shredding or set times for shredding. For further information, see Stormshield Data Shredder in the Advanced configuration guide.

In the file and folder path of the list, you can use the following values between <>:

  • Windows environment variables (e.g. <%PATH%>),

  • Windows CSIDL values,

  • The following SDS Enterprise keywords:

<UserId>: SDS Enterprise User ID,

<RootPath1>: Main folder of user accounts, specified in the policy,

<RootPath2>: User account backup folder, specified in the policy,

<COMMON_APPDATA>: Folder containing application data for all users, C:\Program Data. This is the equivalent of the environment variable %PROGRAMDATA%".

<COMMON_DOCUMENTS>: Folder containing files common to all users, C:\Users\Public\Documents,

<DESKTOP>: Folder containing files on desktop, C:\Users\username\Desktop,

<LOCAL_APPDATA>: Folder containing the data of local applications, C:\Users\username\AppData\Local. This is the equivalent of the environment variable %LOCALAPPDATA%.

<MYDOCUMENTS>: Folder containing the user's files, C:\Users\username\Documents,

<PROFILE>: Folder of the user's profile, C:\Users\<USERNAME>,

<USERNAME>: Windows user name,

If you use environment variables, you must configure them for all users, not just the workstation administrator.