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Data Destruction and Archiving

Data Archiving and Long Term Storage

Not all data must or should be publicly available. However, it may be necessary or beneficial to preserve your data for future use, consultation, or replication of research findings. A dark archive is a secure and restricted repository designed for the long-term preservation of digital content. There are multiple solutions offered through DIT which address data storage and archiving where both size and retention is critical for your choice. Many of the solutions listed below cost a fee determined by DIT or external service partner provided. It is recommended that you communicate with the service owners of these solutions. 

UMD On Premise Storage and Backup Solutions

  • Networked Storage also known as Isilon
  • Data Backups offered through IBM Spectrum Protect solution: Research, academic and administrative departments may protect their data from unexpected loss.
  • HPC Zaratan is a high performance computing cluster available for research computations that require parallel execution on multiple CPUs/systems. While using this environment, users will have access to storage for their datasets. However, the data is not backed up in this environment so it is not recommended for long term storage. There is no cost for users being added to an existing allocation. There is no financial cost to end users for compute time for allocations granted by the Allocations and Advisory Committee.
  • Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) Environment: a virtual computing and storage environment available to researchers with High Risk and Restricted data, and intended primarily for research projects.  Data retention or long term storage is established at the beginning of each research projects

UMD Online Storage

These storage solutions are free to faculty, staff and students but have size restrictions for use.  Once exceeded, the users should pursue other fee based storage options.

  • UMD Box Cloud Storage Box is primarily intended for data that is classified as High Risk. It is approved for up to level 3 data classification. UMD Box is available to all faculty, staff, students, and affiliates at University of Maryland. Increases to storage allocations may be requested for a fee. Box is not recommended for long term storage/archiving/retention.
    • Individual accounts receive a 500GB storage allocation.
    • Box Group accounts receive a 1TB storage allocation.
  • UMD Google Drive is integrated with your university Google Workspace accounts. This is free to the UMD community. Storage limits are
    • Faculty and staff: 256 GB
    • Current students: 256 GB
    • Alumni accounts: 15 GB
  • Other cloud archival options include cloud services offered through DIT for a fee. The management of the storage is the responsibility of the user.  The user should reach out to the DIT managing the service for additional information
    • UMD Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides users with an AWS account which gives the users access to long term storage resources like S3 Glacier. There are monthly usage fees associated with the account and storage resources. 
    • UMD Google Cloud Services (GCS) provides users with cloud storage resources. This service is generally used by researchers and teaching and learning entities. One of Google’s long term storage offerings is ARCHIVE. There are monthly usage fees associated with storage resources. To obtain access to Google Cloud Storage, the user must submit a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Request

Data Destruction

Electronic File Destruction

The University of Maryland does not have a standard procedure for electronic file shredding and/or data
destruction. However, the following procedures and tools are recomended based on your operating system: 

For Windows

Windows provides a command line tool called “SDelete” which can be used to delete and overwrite sensitive data.

There are also a few stand-alone applications including CCleaner and Moo0, which are supported by Windows. 

In addition to this, some antivirus programs may offer a feature to securely remove or shred a file. 

For MACs

For pre-El Capitan (OSX 10.11) Macs with Hard Disks, the secure empty trash feature is the most basic file shredding option. 

For post-El Capitan Macs, terminal commands such as “srm” (secure remove) can be configured to delete specific files and/or directories and overwrite sensitive data. 

There are also stand-alone programs for Mac that can shred files such as File Shredder and ShredIt X. 

For Linux

Linux users can use a command line program called `shred` that deletes and overwrites data.

Destruction of Physical Devices Used to Store and Manage Data

One of the most common data removal processes is degaussing. Degaussing is a data destruction technique that uses a strong magnetic field to permanently erase data from magnetic storage devices. 

The DIT Data Destruction Attestation Process maintains procedures of DIT-managed services for which sensitive data can be certified as properly destroyed and incapable of restoration. This process culminates with a signed attestation to this fact. 

 

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