Rebecca Gibel has been working as a cloud security engineer in an IT company for...

Crypto-shredding is the method of ‘deleting’ encrypted data by destroying the encryption keys. This method is particularly useful in cloud environments where physical destruction of storage media is not feasible. By deleting the keys used to encrypt the data, the data itself becomes inaccessible and is effectively considered deleted.

Here’s how crypto-shredding works:

Encryption: Data is encrypted using cryptographic keys, which are essential for decrypting the data to make it readable.

Key Management: The keys are managed separately from the data, often in a secure key management system.

Deletion of Keys: When instructed to delete the data, instead of trying to erase the actual data, the encryption keys are deleted.

Data Inaccessibility: Without the keys, the encrypted data cannot be decrypted, rendering it unreadable and unrecoverable.

Compliance: This method helps organizations comply with data protection regulations that require secure deletion of personal data.

References:

A technical paper discussing the concept of crypto-shredding as a method for secure deletion of data in cloud environments.

An industry article explaining how crypto-shredding is used to meet data privacy requirements, especially in cloud storage scenarios.