What is the best way to get rid of all your software forensics tools?
If you want them gone, then it’s not as simple as just throwing them away. You need to know what steps you should take in order to make sure that they are completely destroyed and can never be used against you again. In this blog post, we will go over some tips for crushing your forensics tools so that your digital privacy is always protected!
1) Destroy Data on Tools: This tip may seem like an obvious one, but when was the last time you actually formatted or deleted data from a forensic tool? It’s easy to overlook these details because most people think once they have formatted their hard drive or deleted files, they’re gone. Unfortunately, this is not the case and data from forensic tools can be recovered long after they have been formatted or deleted if you know what to look for!
The best way to ensure that your data on a forensics tool is completely destroyed is by using an overwrite function which will use military-grade encryption in order to make sure everything disappears without any chance of recovery. This may sound out there, but it’s actually very common practice among law enforcement agencies who are trying to protect evidence as well as their suspects’ information privacy rights!
One company we recommend looking into for these types of services is DriveSentry because they offer hardware device destruction solutions along with other IT security products like CCTV cameras.
It’s important that you not only destroy your data but also the device itself to ensure that there is no way of recovering any sensitive information.
Some people may be wondering why they would need this type of service in the first place, and it’s quite simple: operating systems are constantly updated which means older versions can’t access new files or programs. It might sound like a waste of cash for some people, especially if you’re just deleting something from an old laptop computer–but what about when you need to delete records from one company because you want to work at another?
It doesn’t matter how good your skills are with software forensics tools–if someone has deleted their data correctly then there’s nothing anyone will be able to do! You’ll need more than just a simple deletion to make sure that there is no way of recovering any sensitive information. The first point: Stop Windows from saving forensic artifacts in the registry. deletes all key values related to deleted files, such as Last Write Time and Security Descriptor. The program then deletes all NTFS metadata, which includes file names and timestamps (last accessed time). This prevents forensics tools from using these details for data recovery.
Some people may be wondering why they would need this type of service in the first place..It doesn’t matter how good your skills are with software forensics tools–if someone has deleted their data correctly then there’s nothing anyone will be able to do to recover it. The second point: Stop Windows from saving forensic artifacts on a hard drive.There are multiple ways to do this, and the best way is to reformat the disk into some other file system such as NTFS or FAT32 without any data integrity guarantees. This would prevent forensics tools from being able to use information that may have been left behind during previous operations (e.g., deleted files) for data recovery. Alternatively, you can copy the partition with all your sensitive information onto an encrypted USB stick using BitLocker which will stop anyone else accessing it even if they’re holding their own version of a software forensics tool.
BitLocker encrypts entire partitions or disks at the sector level, including the partition or disk containing your sensitive information.
BitLocker can be used on Windows computers to make a lost device much less valuable and therefore discourage theft.
BitLocker is also available for desktops running other operating systems such as Linux (Note: I have not tested this myself.)You can use BitLocker in conjunction with TrueCrypt if you’re using FAT32 because it doesn’t support encryption at the file system or volume level. You will need to encrypt everything by hand when creating each container though.
For more information about how to do this please see my blog post “How To Encrypt Your Devices With Truecrypt And Bitlocker.” This setup is not ideal because it requires manual encryption of difficult to find files or folders. In a corporate environment, this might be challenging for the IT team. Regardless, if you have sensitive information on your computer and need some extra security protection at home then TrueCrypt with BitLocker may be worth looking into; but otherwise I recommend something simpler like FileVault in OS X.
For more advice about how to keep your data safe please see my blog post “How To Keep Your Data Safe.”
Towards a Goal: Security Countermeasures Section (Goal)\\
Tip # One: Encrypt Everything With Disk Utility
