Blancco Drive Eraser Earns Indian Government STQC Certification, Now Qualified for DPDP Act Compliance

Thanks to a recently awarded government certification, businesses facing new data deletion mandates under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, as well as Indian government agencies with stringent procurement requirements, can confidently use the Blancco Drive Eraser to destroy data on data storage drives, laptops, desktops, and servers.

India’s Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate recently certified Blancco Drive Eraser, the flagship data erasure software from Blancco Technology Group, as able to securely destroy data to established industry standards.

“The recognition granted by India’s STQC certification underscores Blancco’s unwavering commitment to technological excellence, affirming Blancco Drive Eraser’s quality, security, and performance,” says Blancco Technology Group APAC Director Masayuki Morita. “This certification is a milestone for Blancco and an important step in supporting businesses complying with data erasure standards under the DPDP Act.”

The STQC certification, granted by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology Government of India, verifies that Blancco Drive Eraser v7.8.2 meets the standards necessary to erase data securely and permanently.

This assures businesses, soon to be considered data fiduciaries, that Blancco software enables them to comply with the DPDP Act and other data protection regulations around the world. Government agencies in India are also able to procure Blancco software through GeM, the Government e-Market Place, to streamline their compliance.

Under the DPDP Act, influenced by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), companies processing data in India are required to promptly erase digital personal data once its purpose is fulfilled, or upon individual request. The STQC-certified Blancco Drive Eraser will assist organisations in complying with the DPDP Act by removing all data from drives and drive-based devices, producing a tamper-proof audit trail to document compliance.

Blancco Drive Eraser Aces Rigorous Testing

Blancco Technology Group regularly undergoes assessments by third-party industry organisations. These assessments validate product and solution claims, effectiveness, and the security of its software development processes. With offices in more than 20 countries and a global partner network, the company centralizes data erasure software development in Pune, Maharashtra, with the company ISO-certified for Quality Management and Information Security Management.

To achieve STQC certification, Blancco Drive Eraser underwent rigorous verification testing, ensuring the secure sanitisation of data in accordance with the DoD 5220.22 standard. Testing also ensured that the product met or exceeded Clear and Purge levels of sanitization for the globally referenced NIST 800-88 standard. Blancco Drive Eraser successfully underwent security functional testing on SATA Magnetic HDD, Magnetic SCSI HDD, SATA Solid-State Drive (SSD), Serially Attached SCSI SSD, and NVM Express (NVMe) SSD media types, confirming its standards-based erasure capabilities.

The Directorate’s technology certification also verified the software’s accurate tracking of erasures. This critical software capability enables enterprises to maintain a meticulous record of serialised drives and devices that have been erased. In the case of both internal and external audits, this proves their compliance with DPDP Act erasure standards.

Blancco data erasure solutions have earned more than 13 globally recognised certifications from around the world, and Blancco Drive Eraser is also certified to permanently destroy data to the most recent international data erasure standard, IEEE 2883-2022.

Additional Blancco software is available for files and folders in live environments, for virtual machines, removable devices, mobile devices, and other data storage media, providing India’s businesses with a centralized resource for DPDP Act data deletion requirements.

Businesses preparing for DPDP Act obligations may contact the company’s Pune office at the Blancco Contact Us page