ADISA has been running Product Certification for data sanitisation tools since 2012. This service was originally based purely on a simple "Claims Test " approach whereby the applicant would make a claim about their product and ADISA's test laboratory would prove or disprove this claim. In 2016, a new scheme called Product Assurance was introduced which included a mix of reviewing policies on software development and assessing the outcome from software usage.

Since June 2022, when Dr Phil Turner joined ADISA, we have assessed internationally recognised data santisation standards to review what current expected practice is for data sanitisation products. This analysis highlighted some contradictions and also vagueness in how sanitisation products should be assessed and verified but it did allow us to identify a stand out international set of guidelines, NIST 800-88. Whilst there are limitations within these guidelines it is the most respected specification available with many software vendors and ITADs themselves claiming compliance to them. With no official certification mechanism ADISA took a customer request and set out to develop a scheme which would allow us to verify how a software product meets the specifications laid out in NIST 800-88.

This process took three months of research and testing and a further three months of pilot with chosen partners. During the pilot scheme a new Standard was released called IEEE 2883 which followed similar patterns to NIST 800-88 but with some minor variations. At the time of writing, this Standard is still not widely adopted but given the specification, ADISA built into the test method how compliance with IEEE 2883 could also be verified.

After many months of development, we are delighted to release our new set of Product Certification Schemes;

Product Claims Test  Original scheme designed to verify the outcomes of data sanitisation products.
Product Assurance   Revised existing scheme to verify compliance with Standards.
Certified Software Sanitisation Vendor   Entirely new scheme to audit the software developer behind the product as well as verify software performance.

Further information on these schemes can be found in our brochure here or you can email marketing@adisa.global