Sanitization Standards

Here are some of the standards by country that we have been able to find regarding the disk sanitization problem:

Australia

• ASCI 33: 5 pass wipe, 1 pass with character, 1 pass with inverse of character, repeat first two passes, 1 pass random.

Canada

• RCMP TSSIT OPS-II (pdf): 8 pass wipe.

Germany

• VSItR: Verschlusssachen-IT-Richtlinien, 7 pass wipe followed by verification.

Russia

• Gostechcommission management directive (doc): 2 pass with random data.

UK

• BHMG Infosec Standard no.5: Three pass wipe followed by verification.

USA

• AFSSI-5020 (pdf): USAF Data Sanitization Standard.
• NIST 800-88 (pdf): Guidelines for Data Sanitation, Sept 2006.
• DoD Destruction (pdf): Disposition of Unclassified DoD Computer Hard Drives, Assistant Secretary of Defence, June 4, 2001.
• DoD 5200.28-STD (pdf): Department of Defence Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria], December 26, 1985.
• DoD 5220.22-M (pdf): National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual], January 1995, incorporating Change One (July 1997) and Change Two (February 2001).
• NAVSO P-5239-26: US Navy standards for RLL and MFM encoded drives.

Other

• Gutmann Wipe (pdf): Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory by Peter Gutmann. Overwrite process using a sequence of 35 consecutive writes. First published in the Sixth USENIX Security Symposium Proceedings, San Jose, Ca, July 22-25, 1996.
• Schneier Wipe: Two pass of specific characters followed by five passes of Pseudo Random Data. Published by Bruce Schneier in Applied Cryptography, 1996