Google transitions to encryption-based media sanitisation after decades of disk erasure

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

In a blog post, the company called the new approach ‘cryptographic erasure’, 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.

“Our previous method of media erasure had an environmental cost. Any storage device that…