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Show HN: Destroyer.io – The easiest way to destroy your hard drive

destroyer.io

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Re: Show HN: Destroyer.io – The easiest way to destroy your hard drive

#21

Post by pjlegato »

alexnucci wrote: post #5
sj4nz wrote: post #2

Except for SSD's, perhaps its just easier to use something like http://www.dban.org/ and DIY. If you're a little paranoid, it isn't hard to imagine the USPS waylaying mail hard drives en-route to Destroyer.io for forensic imaging before it reaches its final resting place.

I understand your concerns, but this particular scenario seems a little far fetched. USPS would have to have a very strong interest in your hard drive. Know when you ship it. Intersect the package. Repackage it up exactly as it was. And finally, deliver it. This is extremely complicated, and they would be breaking an immense amount of laws. If they had such a strong interest in getting a hold of your drive, they'd be…

This scenario is not far-fetched at all; the Snowden documents indicate that the NSA is already doing exactly this:

- http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/16/nsa-bugged-cisco-routers/ - http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwald... - http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/29/5253226/nsa-cia-fbi-lapto... - etc.

At the very least, shipments should be made in a strongly tamper-evident container.

Re: Show HN: Destroyer.io – The easiest way to destroy your hard drive

#22

Post by chatmasta »

This is a nice, clean, simple idea. I like this kind of business model, where dev time and technical overhead is minimal, and the focus is on operations. It seems to me that operations based businesses are more defensible, create more jobs, and in general are more fun to run/optimize.

My question: who is your target market? Seems like you want enterprise customers, but specifically I'm wondering which industries?

Do companies interested in this service already employ somebody to do it? And is it a matter as simple as wiping, magnetizing, and drilling the drives? It seems like that would take < 5 minutes per drive of unskilled labor, so I'm wondering exactly how willing companies will be to dump their in-house (probably cheap) labor already performing this service, in a seemingly safer environment.

Re: Show HN: Destroyer.io – The easiest way to destroy your hard drive

#23

Post by alexnucci »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
alexnucci wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the article, and I understand your concern. Adding FedEx as an upgrade option is something that is in the plans. Since we're just launching, we started out with USPS because it's the most cost effective and convenient (daily mailbox pickup and you can even schedule one free). Having an alternative shipping method should help.

You should be able to bring UPS and Fedex online quickly using Easypost: https://www.easypost.com/

The problem isn't in connecting our site to an extra shipping carrier, it's in getting the required volume for our rates and service to be excellent. Also about receiving three different batch deliveries daily.

So, once volume picks up, we'll offer FedEx or UPS along with our standard USPS service.

Thanks for the feedback and recommendation. Cheers!

Re: Show HN: Destroyer.io – The easiest way to destroy your hard drive

#24

Post by alexnucci »

sj4nz wrote: post #19
alexnucci wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the article, and I understand your concern. Adding FedEx as an upgrade option is something that is in the plans. Since we're just launching, we started out with USPS because it's the most cost effective and convenient (daily mailbox pickup and you can even schedule one free). Having an alternative shipping method should help.

You could very well charge a large, hefty premium to have a private courier service pick up drives to be destroyed. I'm sure that there would be a small, select client base that would pay for it. Or, subsidize part of the cost for this premium service from users of the lower-end services.

You are right, that's an option that would serve some of our customers.

We'll definitely expand in our service and shipping options as we grow.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to give us some feedback. Cheers!

Re: Show HN: Destroyer.io – The easiest way to destroy your hard drive

#25

Post by alexnucci »

chatmasta wrote: post #22

This is a nice, clean, simple idea. I like this kind of business model, where dev time and technical overhead is minimal, and the focus is on operations. It seems to me that operations based businesses are more defensible, create more jobs, and in general are more fun to run/optimize. My question: who is your target market? Seems like you want enterprise customers, but specifically I'm wondering which industries? Do…

Thanks for the kind words!

Our target market, at this point, is: small businesses and end consumers.

Our goal is to eventually serve enterprise customers, but we're not going after that for the moment for several reasons (resources, depth of product offering, etc.)

A typical customer would be a small business that goes through 50 or so hard drives per year, enough that they'd want to send us a batch every month. They would also be interested of getting a third party (us) certificate of destruction for their records (industry standard).

Thanks for your feedback and questions. Let me know if there's anything else that I can answer for you. Cheers!

Re: Show HN: Destroyer.io – The easiest way to destroy your hard drive

#26

Post by chatmasta »

alexnucci wrote: post #25
chatmasta wrote: post #22

This is a nice, clean, simple idea. I like this kind of business model, where dev time and technical overhead is minimal, and the focus is on operations. It seems to me that operations based businesses are more defensible, create more jobs, and in general are more fun to run/optimize. My question: who is your target market? Seems like you want enterprise customers, but specifically I'm wondering which industries? Do…

Thanks for the kind words! Our target market, at this point, is: small businesses and end consumers. Our goal is to eventually serve enterprise customers, but we're not going after that for the moment for several reasons (resources, depth of product offering, etc.) A typical customer would be a small business that goes through 50 or so hard drives per year, enough that they'd want to send us a batch every month. They…

What kind of small business fits that profile? I'm having trouble imagining a business requirement that calls for filling an entire hard drive every month, only to destroy it. Is this for something like banks (mentioned on your website) where 30-day record keeping of sensitive data is necessary? What aspect of the data disallows them from simply reusing disks?

Re: Show HN: Destroyer.io – The easiest way to destroy your hard drive

#27

Post by sj4nz »

alexnucci wrote: post #24
sj4nz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could very well charge a large, hefty premium to have a private courier service pick up drives to be destroyed. I'm sure that there would be a small, select client base that would pay for it. Or, subsidize part of the cost for this premium service from users of the lower-end services.

You are right, that's an option that would serve some of our customers. We'll definitely expand in our service and shipping options as we grow. Thanks a lot for taking the time to give us some feedback. Cheers!

You're welcome!

Re: Show HN: Destroyer.io – The easiest way to destroy your hard drive

#28

Post by alexnucci »

chatmasta wrote: post #26
alexnucci wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the kind words! Our target market, at this point, is: small businesses and end consumers. Our goal is to eventually serve enterprise customers, but we're not going after that for the moment for several reasons (resources, depth of product offering, etc.) A typical customer would be a small business that goes through 50 or so hard drives per year, enough that they'd want to send us a batch every month. They…

What kind of small business fits that profile? I'm having trouble imagining a business requirement that calls for filling an entire hard drive every month, only to destroy it. Is this for something like banks (mentioned on your website) where 30-day record keeping of sensitive data is necessary? What aspect of the data disallows them from simply reusing disks?

We're not targeting a specific small business kind, we're going more by size. Big enough to have several hard drives in their offices, small enough that enterprise shredding services are too expensive and big for them.

A lot of companies are moving their storage to the cloud, and the old hard rives need to be destroyed. Other companies upgraded their hard drive size (from 500gb to 1tb) and have no use for the old one. And finally, a lot of hard drives fail (there's about a 10% chance your hard drive will fail, each year, after its second year.

We want to destroy all of those drives :)

Re: Show HN: Destroyer.io – The easiest way to destroy your hard drive

#29

Post by yellowapple »

alexnucci wrote: post #23
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be able to bring UPS and Fedex online quickly using Easypost: https://www.easypost.com/

The problem isn't in connecting our site to an extra shipping carrier, it's in getting the required volume for our rates and service to be excellent. Also about receiving three different batch deliveries daily. So, once volume picks up, we'll offer FedEx or UPS along with our standard USPS service. Thanks for the feedback and recommendation. Cheers!

Wait, the site already says you're using UPS for this. Is that a typo (like the HIPAA one I pointed out earlier)?

If it's a typo, then I guess there's another stumbling block until you do eventually offer UPS...

Re: Show HN: Destroyer.io – The easiest way to destroy your hard drive

#30

Post by yellowapple »

alexnucci wrote: post #13
jdong wrote: post #12

Outsourcing sensitive data destruction sounds like a EXTREMELY good idea. Also, the fact that the faq page contains blatant lies makes this company seem even less trustworthy. "The only way to make sure that your data will never bee accessed is by physically destroying the disk." Why wouldn't dban work?

Hi, hope all is well. Nothing on the site is a lie. Especially, the fact that erasing data from a hardware using software is not a guaranteed way of ensuring that your data ever sees the light of day. As a matter of fact, check out DBAN's homepage: http://www.dban.org/ . The first bullet point: No guarantee of data removal (e.g. DBAN does not detect or securely erase SSDs) Also, do a quick google search for "data ext…

> data extraction after formatting

That's not what DBAN is.

In order to recover data from an overwritten drive, you'd need to remove the platters and run them through specialized laboratory equipment - often running upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars or more - in the hopes of finding residual evidence of the previous data. This isn't even close to surefire with modern hard drives.

You're correct about SSDs, and are correct that physical destruction is the only absolute guarantee. However, it's disingenuous to imply that formatting and overwriting are equivalent (that's far from accurate), and for most consumers and even small businesses, they're dealing with a level of security that - per NIST standards - is sufficiently handled with overwriting alone.

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