Permanently deleting files

Stormshield Data Shredder makes it possible to guarantee the permanent, irreversible erasure of data that users wish to delete. The purpose of this procedure is to prevent third parties from recovering data that users thought had been deleted, without the users' knowledge.

The conventional data erasure procedure in Microsoft Windows does not completely erase data. There are tools that can analyze file fragments on the hard disk and reconstruct deleted files.

Stormshield Data Shredder writes a series of characters in bytes (00;FF;55 by default) in several rounds, replacing the file contents. The initial file is completely modified and even a full analysis of the hard disk, sector by sector, does not allow the data to be recovered.

 Depending on the settings configured by the administrator in the policy, Stormshield Data Shredder can be launched:

  • By right-clicking on the file or folder to be deleted to display the pop-up menu,
  • By dragging and dropping from the Windows desktop.

For more information on how to configure Stormshield Data Shredder in SDMC, refer to the SDS Enterprise Administration guide.