Lots is going on in data retention and destruction this week as Data Domain introduces a shredding feature as part of its Retention Lock software.

This feature gives organizations the ability to shred electronic data after it has no use to the business anymore. Data Domain's implementation lets customers shred deduplicated storage on a per-file basis.

The shredding clears or overwrites blocks on disk that are unique to the deleted files. It can for instance be used to shred small data sets such as Social Security numbers. After data is shredded the disk can be deploy on another storage systems.

Shredding capabilities are growing in importance for compliance with, for example, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) 5220.22-M Clearing and Sanitization Matrix and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-88 Guidelines for Media Sanitization. Government agencies and businesses can now sanitize confidential data that is accidentally written into an unapproved device or shred any content that is no longer required for internal or external purposes. Benefits include:

With Data Domains shredding, destruction of data occurs in-place with deduplicated data. Non-deleted data is available for restoration at any time. Using Retention Lock, files can be protected from accidental deletion and an administrator can remove the unique content of deleted files in accordance with Department of Defense and National Institutes of Standards and Technology algorithms.

Retention Lock software starts at $1,500. Existing customers can upgrade to the new shedding features at no cost.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.