BFSI Organization Ensures Data Protection by Erasing Laptops & LUNs Remotely

In the new work-from-home reality, a top Australian superannuation fund sanitizes employee PCs and laptops from a distance with easy-to-use data erasure software. It also permanently destroys targeted, end-of-life data in a data center hundreds of miles away. And it does both without incurring travel and labor costs.

Highlights

Using Blancco data erasure solutions, the super fund:

• Erases data from employee laptops and desktops before devices leave home offices
• Erases end-of-life data in active storage in a telecom service provider’s data center
• Automates data erasure processes to maximize efficiency
• Proves compliance with data privacy and security regulations with a tamper-proof audit trail

Challenge

Like employees all over the world, the vast majority of the super fund’s workers shifted to widely dispersed home offices in the first half of 2020. When devices needed to be replaced, repaired or returned, however, health concerns prevented workers from bringing their computers to an IT office (or having IT come to them) for secure erasure. Likewise, shipping these machines with intact data on them violated good security practice: devices in transit were vulnerable to loss, tampering or theft.

The super fund also operates a private cloud that houses about 800 TB of storage, with the physical infrastructure located at a data center ten hours away from the IT team’s headquarters. Yet when data was no longer required for business use, targeted data destruction was needed to comply with data minimization rules and for data security.

Particularly in a time of pandemic lockdowns, the super fund needed remote erasure for both circumstances.

Solution

To protect the confidential information of its investors and follow government regulations, a super fund must provide a high level of data security throughout the data lifecycle, including at data end-of-life. Blancco solutions provide industry-leading assurance of complete and permanent data erasure in support of that requirement. They also provide the means to perform secure remote erasure, removing the need for physical access to the devices that house the data.
With thousands of employee laptops and desktops no longer located at central locations, the super fund’s IT team set about implementing a remote erasure process. Using Blancco Preinstall, they created an executable file containing the erasure software. After pushing the executable out to the client using Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, automated processes carried out the erasure.

Blancco Drive Eraser is Common Criteria Certified by the Australasian Certification Authority. Common Criteria is an internationally recognized standard (ISO 15408) for evaluating information and communications technology security products. This certification gave IT decision makers at the super fund additional peace of mind about choosing Blancco solutions.
To erase data from cloud storage, the team adopted Blancco LUN Eraser. Installing the solution in a virtual machine enabled the team to easily deploy the erasure software over the network and execute it on its 800 TB of storage volumes located at the data center. The solution sanitizes data from active logical unit numbers (LUNs) while leaving the operating system intact, avoiding downtime.

In both cases, the super fund easily deployed Blancco solutions with minimal engineering effort. These solutions also overcame all limitations of distance, giving the fund’s IT staff efficient control over data erasure processes. And they provided data security and compliance teams with digitally signed certificates of completed erasure, all stored in a central location.

Results

Employee laptops and desktops are erased right in their home offices so they can be shipped back to a central location with no sensitive data on board, whether at device end-of-life or because of requirements for break-fix and repair. IT now also has a way to erase individual LUNs from live cloud storage located hundreds of miles away, without downtime. For both client machines and cloud storage, these remote approaches reinforce data security and regulatory compliance—with a tamper-proof audit trail—while avoiding the health risks of staff travel and while building operational efficiencies. The result? Peace of mind for management, as well as assurance for hundreds of thousands of stakeholders that protecting sensitive data is a high priority for one of Australia’s largest super funds.

Blancco is the industry standard in data erasure and mobile device diagnostics software. Our data erasure software provides thousands of organizations the tools they need to enable sustainable data sanitization processes across the widest array of IT assets. By focusing on erasing and reusing assets instead of physically destroying them, organizations can improve their security posture and address corporate social responsibility requirements, while also ensuring compliance with local and global data privacy requirements.

Blancco data erasure solutions have been tested, certified, approved and recommended by 15+ governing bodies and leading organizations around the world. No other data erasure software can boast this level of compliance with the rigorous requirements set by government agencies, legal authorities and independent testing laboratories. All Blancco erasures are verified and certified, resulting in a tamper-proof audit trail.

Learn more. Request your Free Data Erasure Trial for Enterprises today.