341st Space Wing secures information with new equipment

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Dillon White
  • 341st Space Wing Public affairs Office
MALMSTROM AIR FORCE BASE, Mont. --  A new piece of equipment arrived at the 341st Space Wing Information Assurance Office recently that will ensure information assurance for years to come. 

Computers at Malmstrom are replaced or upgraded every three years; that's roughly 700 annually, and prior to sending the old hard drives to the Defense Reutilization Marketing Office as scrap metal, the information they contain must be destroyed to prevent exploitation. To accomplish this, a National Security Agency-approved degausser is used to demagnetize the hard drives. 

A gauss is a measurement for the strength of a magnetic field and the practice of degaussing has been utilized for decades for different purposes. Naval vessels utilize degaussing as a countermeasure to magnetically-triggered explosive mines that detect distortions in the Earth's magnetic field created by ships, according to an article in "CHIPS - The Department of the Navy Information Technology Magazine." 

To destroy magnetically recorded information on a hard drive, the machine creates a powerful magnetic field reversing the existing magnetic field of a hard drive in 40 seconds, rendering it useless to people who attempt to exploit its information. This method is used because erased or overwritten information can still be recovered. One out of every 10 degaussed hard drives is tested on a computer for quality control. 

"The computer I check them on is also disconnected from the network to prevent any viruses from entering the network," Mr. Wesley Speth, 341st SW Information Assurance Office analyst, said. 

Prior to the arrival of the new degausser machine, used hard drives from the 2,600 computers on base were shipped via courier to Langley Air Force Base, Va., for disintegration or were erased by workgroup managers using DoD-approved wiping software. 

"A 20 gigabyte hard drive takes three hours to completely wipe using Department of Defense-approved wiping software," said Todd Cramer 341st SW IA manager. "Hard drives in use now hold 80 to 120 gigabytes and take more than 12 hours to erase." 

The IA office already had a degausser; however it could not destroy newer hard drives built to withstand greater amounts of physical abuse, magnetic interference and static discharge, Mr. Speth said. 

"Our old degausser could effectively destroy hard drives prior to 1999 and the new machine is capable of destroying all hard drives made after 1999," he said. 

"It paid for itself the first time I used it. One incident resulting from a compromise of classified information could cost $50,000 at a minimum and could cost as much as several million." 

An example of such a compromise could be the exploitation of a hard drive from finance containing social security numbers and bank account numbers. 

"Now we are able to officially and legally destroy information in-house. The wing is a safer place," Mr. Speth said.

For more information go to
www.chips.navy.mil/archives/06_Oct/web_pages/Hide_Ship.htm