Here is a stack 105 computers we are surplusing at work after 5 years in service.
Before they get sold at auction it is my job to make sure all the data is securely and permanently removed from the drives. For this tedious job I turn to a copy of DBAN to wipe the drive 7 times (also known as the DoD 5220.22-M wipe). It takes about 4 hours per PC so for most of the last 3 weeks I have been babysitting this stack of computers to make sure they finish correctly and without errors.
This is what “real security” work boils down to for most practitioners. As much as I want to pretend that my job is chasing down hackers, adding new firewalls and yelling cheesy movie lines… it is taking care of the little stuff like this that ensures we don’t sell our users data that is one of the most valuable things I do at work.
