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Comment by verandaguy | Hacker News Reader

I’d say it depends on your use case.

In many compliance-heavy fields, there are specific requirements around data destruction, sometimes involving physically destroying the storage medium up to some given standard.

I’d assume this device targets that market.

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Most data destruction compliance standards I am familiar with allow for cryptographic erasure when the device is encrypted prior to sensitive data being written to it (excluding some specific data-sensitivity levels).

If they are strict enough to not allow for cryptographic erasure (or the data is above a specific sensitivity), this device would likely not be in compliance either -- physical destruction generally requires shredding/grinding to a specific particulate size, or incineration, and this device does not appear to do either.

I'm not saying there are many (any?) modern standards that would allow physical destruction without cryptographic erasure. As far as I know, physical destruction requirements are usually accompanied by cryptographic erasure requirements.

I'm also not saying that all compliance standards related to data security require physical destruction; just that these absolutely exist, mostly in defense and similar areas.

Most standards (e.g. ISO 27001, NIST 800-88) do allow for physical destruction without cryptographic erasure if the device is being shredded or incinerated (to the applicable shredding/incineration standard of particulate size/temperature). Especially because cryptographic erasure is effectively pointless (at high data-sensitivity levels) if the device wasn't encrypted immediately and prior to data being written. Notably, NIST 800-88 2.6 explains when not to use cryptographic erasure, and when to consider it, but there is no requirement for it.

But, I mainly made my comment in reply to this part of your comment:

>I’d assume this device targets that market.

Because I don't think there is any market where this SSD punching device would be compliant and cryptographic erasure wouldn't be compliant. At least, in my career, I have not seen any environment or standard where this would be considered compliant but cryptographic erasure wouldn't be.

Right, but nobody's arguing that there are cases where you'd physically destroy a device, while cryptographic erasure of the data is not required as well.

I didn't explicitly say this in my original comment since it seemed implicit given the context.

>nobody's arguing that there are cases where you'd physically destroy a device, while cryptographic erasure of the data is not required as well.

I am very explicitly saying cryptographic erasure is not required if you are following physical destruction standards (in ISO 27001 and NIST 800-88, at least).

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