Whitecanyon Software Assigned Patent

Whitecanyon Software, Inc., American Fork, UT, has been assigned a patent (10,331,376) developed by Griffes, Donald E., Pleasant Grove, UT, Pedigo, Daniel S., Santaquin, UT, and Nuttall, Dean V., Lehi, UT, for “system and method for encrypted disk drive sanitizing.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A system and method for first changing the encryption key on a self-encrypting disk drive followed by a complete disk wipe. Either process can be separately performed, and they can be performed in any order. In fact, one embodiment of the invention, resets the symmetric key, wipes the disk a predetermined number of times with different predetermined data patterns, and then resets the key a second time. This assures that there is absolutely no way to recover the original key or to read the original plain text data, even if some of it’s encrypted values remain on unallocated tracks after wiping. A user can be assured that in milliseconds after starting the wiping process, the entire disk is rendered unreadable and unrecoverable.”

The patent application was filed on August 10, 2017 (15/673,687).