Block erase (also referred to as “secure erase” and by other names, depending on the implementation) is an ATA command that tells the SSD’s controller to apply an erase voltage. The voltage is applied to all NAND cells of the...

Patelco Credit Union, a Sacramento-based credit union with 37 local branches, has confirmed that its recent security breach occurred due to a ransomware attack.  In an email sent to the members of the credit union, Patelco CEO Erin Mendez said...

We’re approaching the 70th anniversary of the hard disk drive (and despite a  popular misconception, hard drive sales are still going strong). Without HDDs, modern computing wouldn’t be possible, and when the IBM 350 was introduced in 1956, it jump-started...

The Lockbit 3.0 ransomware group claims to have breached the United States Federal Reserve, exfiltrating about 33 terabytes of potentially sensitive data.  The group claims that the stolen data includes “Americans’ banking secrets,” though they have not yet published any...

A ransomware attack targeting Synnovis, a U.K. healthcare partnership, has significantly disrupted medical procedures in several of London’s largest hospitals.  The incident has prevented hospitals from matching patients’ blood types at a normal frequency. Surgeries and other procedures that require...

Frequently, our clients will ask us about how the data recovery process works — and providing a quick answer can be difficult, because every case presents a different set of challenges.In some situations, we’re able to restore files by...

You’ve accidentally made changes to an Excel spreadsheet, and you want to roll them back. Good news: It’s not an especially difficult task.  Newer versions of Microsoft’s Excel software include a Version History feature, which you can use to restore...

Hard drive platter contamination occurs when foreign particles (or contaminants) reach the platters that store your data. The platters are thin metal or plastic discs covered with a thin magnetic material.  Under normal conditions, read/write heads float just above the...

Ascension, which operates 140 hospitals across the United States, has confirmed that an ongoing service outage was caused by a ransomware attack.  The organization says that they have implemented procedures to “ensure patient care delivery continues to be safe and...

You should never toss a hard drive into a dumpster — hard drives are recyclable, and given that we create more than 59 million tons of electronic waste every year, every bit of recycling counts (pardon the pun).  But while...