Certain security risks are associated with the handling, processing and disposal of magnetic media. An increasing range of computer, communication, recording and entertainment systems use magnetic media such as floppy and hard disks, reels, cassettes and tapes and it is not sufficient to ‘record over’ existing media. Computer hard drives could hold information that companies would not wish to fall into the hands of competitors, or, computer reels may have data that could infringe the data protection laws should they be disposed of in the wrong way. There are undoubtedly many examples of more serious risks.

The UK Government, through the Cabinet Office has established a specification, administered by the CESG (Communications-Electronics Security Group) which specifies the performance levels of degaussers needed to destroy and render UK Government media secure. The CESG Degaussing Standard is the new UK government standard from the Communication-Electronics Security Group for certifying that the claims made about the security functionality of degaussers have been independently verified and tested.

The CESG Degaussing standard replaces the SEAP 8500 Degaussing Standard on which Verity Systems ‘S’ model degaussers were granted TOP SECRET status. The new CESG standard has two levels of degaussing:

Lower Level - for RESTRICTED and below.

Higher Level - for CONFIDENTIAL and above

Currently all ‘S’ model degaussers are approved at the Lower Level. This means any magnetic media (holding RESTRICTED or less) may be regarded as NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED after being degaussed.

In order to achieve Higher Level status, all degaussers must be retested against the new CESG Degaussing Standard. At this time, the testing standard is not yet available.

The ‘S’ model degaussers may still be used to degauss magnetic media at CONFIDENTIAL and above, but the degaussed media is subject to additional handling requirements (detailed in S(E)N 06/09).