Oops they did it again: The 2007 Australian study of remnant data contained on 2nd hand hard disks

Authors

Craig Valli, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Andrew Woodward, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publisher

School of Computer and Information Science, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia

Abstract

The 2007 study used a biased selection process where the primary focus was the purchase of high-speed SCSI drives and drive packs, in addition 2.5 inch laptop drives were targeted. Conventional IDE based hard drives were also examined in the study. A total of 84 drives were examined this year, 23 yielded data that represented significant and in some cases profound exposure if data. Encouragingly more hard disks were erased in this study than in previous studies. However, there is still a significant gap in erasure procedures in organisations, which is particularly concerning given that the drives were from large corporations.

Comments

5th Australian Digital Forensics Conference, Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia, December 3rd 2007.

DOI

10.4225/75/57ad5aac7ff30