The process required three secure overwriting passes and verification at the end of the final pass. Department of Defense (DoD) in the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (also known as “NISPOM,” “NISP Operating Manual,” or Department of Defense document #5220.22-M), it specified a process of overwriting hard disk drives (HDDs) with patterns of ones and zeros. The DoD 5220.22-M method for data erasure first appeared in the early days of the data sanitization industry. See why it was named Best Security Product in 2022. Blancco Drive Eraser delivers DoD 5220.22 M (3 pass) and M ECE (7 pass) wiping capabilities-and more. At a minimum, such applications will prevent the data from being retrieved through standard data recovery methods. The DoD “standard” and others like it take overwriting a step further with prescribed random overwriting methods. To effectively erase previously stored data, the simplest techniques overwrite hard disk drive storage areas with the same data everywhere-often using a pattern of all zeros. But what does this “standard” mean for enterprises, government entities, ITADs, and data sanitization solution providers? The “DoD standard,” referring to DoD 5220.22-M, is a term often used in the data sanitization industry. What is the DoD Standard (DoD 5220.22-M)? Richard is regularly featured in news publications such as Forbes, Dark Reading, Infosecurity Magazine, Network World and BetaNews, where he comments on data governance, data management, and cyber security. His book, There Will Be Cyberwar, was named a Washington Post bestseller in April 2016. Currently, Richard is a cyber security lecturer at Charles Sturt University in Australia and a strategic advisory member of the International Data Sanitization Consortium. Security executive Richard Stiennon has previously held roles such as Chief Strategy Officer of Blancco Technology Group from 2016-2017 and Vice President of Research at Gartner Inc. Read more to learn about how the DoD data overwriting standard applies today. This “3-pass” procedure is designed to prevent data from being recovered by commercially available processes.īut is the DoD 5220.22-M standard ((or, the longer DoD 5220.22-M ECE standard) the best wiping method for your organization? It must then be followed by verification. When vendors state that their solutions meet the DoD 5220.22-M “standard,” it typically means that their software will write to all addressable hard drive locations with a character, its complement and a random character.

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