{"id":79210,"date":"2025-10-14T05:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T05:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/79210\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T05:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T05:14:09","slug":"google-transitions-to-encryption-based-media-sanitisation-after-decades-of-disk-erasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/79210\/","title":{"rendered":"Google transitions to encryption-based media sanitisation after decades of disk erasure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google<\/a> announced on Monday that it is overhauling its approach to data deletion<\/a> by adopting a layered encryption strategy for media sanitisation<\/a>, citing the increasing technological complexity of modern storage devices.<\/p>\n

In a blog post, the company called the new approach \u2018cryptographic erasure\u2019, a process that deletes the encryption keys protecting data rather than the data itself. Once the keys are destroyed, the data becomes unreadable and unrecoverable.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur previous method of media erasure had an environmental cost. Any storage device that failed our rigorous verification process was physically destroyed. Cryptographic erasure allows us to move towards a more sustainable, circular economy. By eliminating the need to physically destroy drives, we can reuse more of our hardware,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n

The earlier process that Google used was called the “brute force disk erase” wherein data was removed by overwriting the entire storage drive.<\/p>\n

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recognises cryptographic erasure as a valid sanitisation technique in its special publication 800-88, the company said.<\/p>\n

In 2022, Google rolled out a beta version of end-to-end encryption for Gmail <\/a>on the web, which ensured sensitive data in email bodies was unreadable to anyone other than the sender and receiver. It also tested end-to-end encrypted RCS (Rich Communication Services) group chats the same year.<\/p>\n

Google keeps secrets<\/p>\n

In June this year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was asked during an interview<\/a> why people should trust Big Tech companies such as Google, given that these companies store their users\u2019 \u201cdeepest and darkest secrets\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe earned the trust,\u201d Pichai replied during the interview with news agency Bloomberg. \u201cWe\u2019ve been storing people’s emails now for many, many years, but we’ve handled that content responsibly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pichai went on to state that Google has protected its users from \u201cbad actors\u201d and \u201cunwarranted requests,\u201d and that people trust the company because of this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google announced on Monday that it is overhauling its approach to data deletion by adopting a layered encryption…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[51769,51768,6461,1711,61,60,51770,1005,80],"class_list":["post-79210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-data-deletion","tag-disk-erasure","tag-gmail","tag-google","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-media-sanitisation","tag-sundar-pichai","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}