Bangkok Post : A disk-wiping utility for Windows Mobile Devices

COMPUTING on the Go

I have mentioned many times in my articles that, as a true believer in data security, I encrypt data on my home PC as well as my PDA. Both on-the-fly encryption software on my PC (TrueCrypt) and my PDA (SecuBox) share the same security concept. They create encrypted volumes, which are then used as virtual drives to store sensitive information.

Encryptions implemented by these two applications, utilising the best technology known to the non-intelligence community, are strong and dependable, as far as I'm concerned. But they only protect information residing within the encrypted volumes. Not all data is kept within this space, unfortunately.

Most computing operations on your machines, as well as temporary files they create, are carried out outside of this protective zone. There will be times when you need to prevent such data from falling into the wrong hands. In such cases, you have to remove it completely from your devices.

Unluckily, normal deletion performed by the operating system just removes filenames from the file system's index, then marks space occupied by these "deleted" files as available. Such an undertaking leaves room for file recovery, an undesirable situation for sensitive information, unless the space is re-occupied by new data.

Enter the disk-wiping utility, a kind of software that actually deletes files by overwriting them with strong data sanitising algorithms. The software employs various methods of overwriting to ensure greater difficulty for recovery operations. Besides wiping files, most disk wiping utilities also feature free-space wiping, an action that wipes the entire free space of any specified disk drive, minimising risk of recovering files already "deleted" by the operating system.

You may think that all this is overkill. But I beg to differ. Such precautions are important for any machine carrying highly sensitive information, even more so for a PDA because it's more prone to being lost and stolen. Just to bring out the paranoid in you, I should also mention that even formatting your hard drives or hard resetting your PDA might not be enough to fox professional data recovery methods.

Our topic of discussion for today is SecuWipe, a disk-wiping utility designed for Windows Mobile devices. The software features a comprehensive list of data wiping, including standard wiping of files, free space, and internet cache/cookies/history, and specific wiping of contacts, calls, email, SMS, MMS, notes, recordings, appointments, tasks and SD cards.

For this kind of utility, the user interface and operational speed need to be practical for it to be used regularly. One quick glance reveals that SecuWipe's user interface is practical and easy to use. The on-screen option bars are finger-navigation friendly and actually remind me of similar interface from SPB BackUp.

The software managed to wipe a 50MB file residing in my PDA's internal memory within two minutes and 15 seconds. It also wiped the free-space (105MB) in six minutes and 39 seconds. The trade-off between security and speed is acceptable. Wiping an SD card, on the other hand, shows mixed results.

I performed the tests on my PDA using two different SD cards. Wiping speed on the first card was about 10 times slower than the speed achieved from wiping internal memory. This is difficult to accept. Wiping speed on the second card is only three times slower than internal memory wiping, however. On this, Aiko Solutions explains that differences in SD card wiping speeds depend on the cards themselves as well as the card controllers in each PDA.

I have also tested SD card wiping using Heidi Computer's Eraser, a disk-wiping utility installed on my home PC. The test results definitely show that SD card wiping via SecuWipe on a PDA is between three and 20 times slower than SD card wiping via Eraser on a PC.

Needless to say, it's more practical to wipe your PDA's SD card on your PC using applications like Heidi Computer's Eraser (available from http://www.heidi.ie/node/6). But if you must do it via SecuWipe, make sure you have your PDA's power charger near-by.

In the end, SecuWipe is a very good security application, one that you should employ in conjunction with SecuBox, for perfect security on your PDA. Of course, there are some areas that could use improvement, like the re-start bug in the registration process and lack of free-space size reporting. But these are minor. And they are to be fixed in the near future. SecuWipe is available for Pocket PC, Smartphone and Windows CE devices. It can be downloaded from http://www.aikosolutions.com/products/secuwipe-for-pocket-pc, and costs $39.95.

NB All files used in tests for this article were created by Aiko Solution's SecuBox (http://www.aikosolutions.com) to ensure size similarity. All wiping tests were performed using medium security setting of US DoD 5220.22-M (E), which overwrites the area with 0s, 1s and then with a random byte.