Protecting your system – file shredding

So the next tool I want to demonstrate is one which is named File Shredder. So it’s been developed as a file-safe, reliable tool to shred company files digitally. So in the past, or maybe even now in your workplace, when we’re dealing with files or paperwork which we want to get rid of, we use a paper shredder to get rid of those. Now, in the digital world, where we’re dealing with digital files, we have a similar approach. But it’s more of a digital shredding approach, so electronically getting rid of particular files. So I’ve got a particular tool here called File Shredder. Put simply, it’s a very simple, free tool which is very effective.

So if we just go into the settings, for a moment, you’ll see all the different algorithms there we can use, which come into play to make sure our files get completely shredded and completely obliterated. So the particular default secure algorithm here is the Department of Defence algorithm there. It’s very strong and suitable for this. Essentially, most of the time what happens here is it will take a particular file, and in order to get rid of it, it will just write over the top of it a multitude of times. So essentially, what it gets to at the end is something completely different to what actually we started with to begin with.

And that file is going to be very hard to be recovered. And this is going to be particularly useful in your workplace, say, where you’re trying to get rid of confidential files that were very important, and you don’t want anyone to see. And it’s particularly important because in most workplaces, where there replace systems or maybe they have to be upgraded or something like that. So what happens with those files we store on the drive? If there’s any local or any on the server drive, for instance, how do we ensure that someone who ends up with that drive when it’s refurbished, for instance, can’t just recover all those files? So this is one particular way. So let’s just demo this.

We’ll go into our financial documents again. Let’s pick out a couple of these. And all you have to do is just drag them onto the screen here.

We’ve got two financial documents we want to get rid of there. We can basically just use the ‘Shred files’ now. Simple as that, they’re shredded. Very strong algorithm used there to ensure that those files can’t be recovered. That one’s pretty simple. Done with that. It’s a simple but really powerful tool.