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AFSSI-5020 Requirement - Secure Data Purge From The Flash Storage Device

Posted by Samuel Nakhimovsky on Friday, 07 Mar 2014

US Dept of Air Force Seal

One of the many data sanitization methods used to securely  and efficiently purge all stored data from the Flash storage device is AFSSI-5020. Defined in the Air Force System Security Instruction 5020 by the United States Air Force (USAF) this method mandates the destructive sequence below to overwrite existing information on a hard drive, SSD, Flash card or other storage device.

The AFSSI-5020 data sanitization method is defined to be implemented in the following way:

  • Pass 1: Formats a drive with all zeros
  • Pass 2: Erases fully all data
  • Pass 3: Programs a random character and verifies the write

Erasing and re-writing a Solid State Drive using the AFSSI-5020 data sanitization method will prevent all software and hardware based file recovery methods from re-creating previously stored information from the drive.

Most data destruction implementations support multiple data sanitization methods in addition to AFSSI-5020. Fortasa Memory Systems Military SSDs incorporate purge sequences that adhere to multiple standards.

Please contact Fortasa to discuss the security requirements of your Solid State Storage needs.