What does NSA approval mean?
NSA stands for National Security Agency. The NSA is an agency of the US government which is responsible for protecting U.S. government communications and information systems. The NSA creates the standards for communications and information systems that all US government agencies must comply with. Many of these standards are now recognized and adhered to by organizations and agencies throughout the world.
The NSA publishes guidance on the sanitization (erasure), declassification, and release of storage devices for disposal or recycling in the “NSA CSS Policy Manual 9-12, NSA/CSS Storage Device Declassification Policy Manual”, dated 13 Mar 2006. In brief, the NSA no longer approves overwriting procedures for the sanitization or downgrading (e.g. release to lower level classified information controls) of storage devices (e.g., hard drives) used for classified processing.
The NSA dictates that magnetic tape storage and hard drives are sanitized using an NSA evaluated degausser.
The NSA publish the EPL-Degausser (Evaluated Products List – Degausser) which specifies the current degaussers that have been evaluated against and found to satisfy the requirements for erasure of magnetic storage devices that retain sensitive or classified data.
A production unit of each model of degausser was evaluated against NSA/CSS requirements for erasure of sensitive or classified magnetic storage devices. This demonstrates that the evaluated degausser has met the applicable NSA/CSS performance requirements. The process involved to get a degausser certified by the NSA is lengthy and challenging, and equipment is only approved if it meets stringent operational requirements.
Magnetic storage devices are defined by their magnetic coercivity in units of Oe (Oersteds). Degaussers listed in the NSA Evaluated Products List are defined by the coercivity of the magnetic storage devices that can be erased.
Degaussers capable of erasing disk storage devices are broken into two categories: Longitudinal (L) and Perpendicular (P). Longitudinal disk storage devices have previously been the norm, but since 2006 perpendicular disk storage devices have been available. Longitudinal and perpendicular disk storage devices will be marketed side by side for a few more years and then perpendicular disk storage devices will be the norm. Due to the different magnetic fields required to erase each technology, degaussers available on the market today are capable of either erasing just longitudinal disk storage devices or both longitudinal and perpendicular disk storage devices.
Why is the SDD Master better than other NSA approved degaussers?
Degausser manufactures will often use the strength of the magnetic field to promote their degausser, in theory the higher the magnetic field, the better the erasure. But this not always the case. The magnetic field stated is often the maximum produced, which is not necessarily the field that the magnetic media is subjected to. A maximum 14,000 magnetic may only be subjecting the media a field as low as 7000 gauss!
The SDD-Master delivers a minimum magnetic field of 17,750 three times to the media throughout the automatic operation. This ensures that the SDD Master remains unrivalled by any other degausser on the market. |
