Data Wiping

To prevent the inadvertent transfer of sensitive and/or personal data to unauthorized parties, the New York State Office of General Services (NYS-OGS) requires all surplus IT equipment to be cleansed of all data before disposing or repurposing. It is expected that all data be erased from the hard drive (and any other media) in such a manner that it cannot be recovered. Customer Engagement and Support can provide this service on an as-needed basis. It is recommended that when repurposing equipment (e.g. moving machines between personnel or departments), that the machine be cleaned of any University data before the swap.

The NYS-OGS form (found under Related Links) should be filled out with any surplus equipment stating that data wiping has been completed. To completely and permanently erase a hard drive, one can use programs such as Symantec GDisk or freeware programs such as Eraser