A register that goes blank at disposal is blank when somebody asks.
Every machine leaves eventually — resold, recycled, returned to a lessor, or destroyed. The question that follows it out of the door is what happened to the data. Simpletag issues a certificate that can answer that, because the register already holds the provenance.
The method has to suit the drive.
NIST SP 800-88 sorts sanitisation into three categories — Clear, Purge and Destroy — and which methods qualify depends entirely on what the media is. This is where most disposal records quietly become worthless.
| Method | Category | Spinning disk | SSD / flash |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cryptographic erase destroy the media encryption key | Purge | Valid | Valid, and instant |
| Drive sanitise command ATA Secure Erase, NVMe Format | Purge | Valid | Valid — if the right command is used |
| Overwrite writing over every addressable block | Clear | Valid | Not defensible |
| Degauss | Purge | Valid | Does nothing at all |
| Physical destruction | Destroy | Valid | Valid |
Why overwriting an SSD is not enough
Wear levelling and over-provisioning keep blocks that the drive's own interface cannot address. You can write over every sector you are allowed to see and still leave data in the sectors you were never shown. On a spinning disk a single pass is accepted; on flash the same pass proves nothing.
The advice that will cost you a certificate.
Not sure which method suits the machine in front of you? The step-by-step guide walks through it →
These are the four things people are most often told to do, and all four produce a disposal record that does not survive being questioned.
What the certificate records.
A certificate is worth nothing without provenance, and provenance is the one thing an asset register already holds: the serial, the model, the drives, who had it, and when it last checked in. Simpletag attaches all of that to the method and the person who performed it.
Because the register knows what the drive was, it can also check the method against the media — and if the two do not match, that appears on the certificate rather than being quietly omitted. A certificate that only ever says everything was fine teaches its reader nothing.
Two rules we do not bend
Close the file properly.
Free for 25 computers, including the certificates.