FORTASA BLOG

NAND Flash Copyback Command - Hidden Potential for Drive Corruption

Usage of NAND Flash COPYBACK Command Causes Drive Corruption and Data Loss

One of the "Beneficial" features that was added into NAND Flash operation was the COPYBACK Command.

Also known as the INTERNAL DATA MOVE (IDM) operations, Copyback was promoted by the NAND Flash vendors as a performance increasing feature which enabled the data page to be copied from one memory location to another within a NAND device without transferring the data off-chip to a Flash controller.

READ MORE

Device Serialization Makes Fortasa Flash Cards and SSDs More Secure

Many of our industrial and military customers have a high level of interest to protect the critical information that is stored on their SSD or Flash card. A typical solution is to purchase a shrink wrap Encryption software application package that will encrypt the stored data. This level of encryption uses only the private key (password) to encrypt the stored files.The encrypted files can be copied and drives duplicated, but regardless of the storage medium the files will only be decrypted and useful to the owner of the encryption key.

Secure Encrypted Files

This solution works well as long as the private key is not publicly shared. If, however, the encryption key is released in the public domain, the SSD can be easily duplicated, files decrypted and easily shared.

READ MORE

Industrial Flash SSD Economics - Premium Value for the Higher Quality

Fortasa Industrial SSD Product Family

Frequently our embedded customers compare our Industrial Grade Flash Card, SSD and other storage products with the consumer grade devices typically found on Amazon, or other retail or e-tail sites. The discrepancy in product cost between the Industrial Grade Flash and its consumer brethren is amazingly wide. Considering that every card, whether Industrial or Consumer, has to have a connector, PCB, Flash Controller and NAND Flash component, they are often dumbfounded as to the such sizable price difference.

Given the lack of transparency, I wanted to elaborate on the economics of building an Industrial vs. a Consumer Flash card and the reason for substantial cost difference.

READ MORE

DOD 5220.22-M Requirement - Secure Data Purge From The Flash Storage Device

DoD 5520.22-M Security Data Purge

Another ubiquitous and popular data sanitization method to safely and securely erase sensitive data from a storage device, including Flash SSDs, is DoD 5220.22-M.  This method was initially defined by the US National Industrial Security Program (NISP) in the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (NISPOM) and is one of the most commonly used data sanitization methods used in data destruction software. Another item to note is that the NISPOM does not define any US government standard for data sanitization. The Cognizant Security Authority (CSA) is truly responsible for data sanitization standards.

The DoD 5220.22-M data sanitization method is implemented in the following way in Fortasa Flash SSDs.:

READ MORE