Before your retired IT can be resold or recycled, its data has to be destroyed to a standard your auditor accepts. Maxicom sanitises every data-bearing drive to NIST SP 800-88 and IEEE 2883-2022, issues a certificate for each, and physically destroys drives that can't be wiped — then pays you for the hardware.
We work to the standards auditors recognise, and we name them on the certificate. NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 is the framework most auditors default to; IEEE 2883-2022 is the current standard for SSD and NVMe, which can't be reliably overwritten the way spinning disks can; DoD 5220.22-M is applied where a contract requires it. For UAE data, the UAE PDPL (Federal Decree-Law 45/2021) applies, with the DIFC and ADGM regimes for firms in those free zones.
The method is chosen by the media, not by habit — HDD overwrite, SSD/NVMe firmware sanitize, cryptographic erase for self-encrypting drives, and physical destruction for anything that can't be sanitised. Every path ends in a certificate, on a documented chain of custody.
Magnetic hard drives are erased by verified overwrite to NIST 800-88, and where required degaussed — the erasure is checked, not assumed, and recorded on the certificate.
Solid-state and NVMe drives are sanitised using the firmware Sanitize command to IEEE 2883, the method built for flash — a simple overwrite doesn't reliably clear an SSD, so the correct standard is used.
Self-encrypting and Opal drives, and arrays like NetApp NSE, are cleared by cryptographic erase — destroying the encryption key makes the data unrecoverable in seconds, faster and more reliable than overwriting.
Damaged or unreadable drives that can't be sanitised are physically destroyed — shredded or crushed — through a vetted partner, with the destruction certificate returned to you.
Every drive gets a certificate naming the serial, the method and the standard applied, so you hold documentary proof of destruction for audit, PDPL and internal compliance.
From collection to destruction, every asset is tracked on a chain-of-custody record, with witnessed or on-site destruction available for higher-classified media.
Every engagement produces a certificate of destruction per asset, naming the drive, the method and the standard applied. Assets move on a documented chain of custody from your door to our facility, so there's an unbroken record of what happened to each one. Where physical destruction is required, the partner's destruction certificate is issued alongside our records. Your information-security officer can witness the process on request — typical for BFSI and government engagements — and sample certificates are available under NDA before you commit.
The ways to destroy data on storage are not interchangeable, and choosing the wrong one is how “erased” drives still leak. Overwriting (software wiping), verified to NIST 800-88, is enough for a healthy hard drive that will be re-used or sold — it clears the data but keeps the drive usable. Degaussing uses a strong magnetic field to scramble a hard drive's platters; it works on magnetic media but destroys the drive, and does nothing useful to an SSD, whose data lives in flash rather than on platters. Physical destruction — shredding or crushing — is for drives that can't be verified any other way, or for top-classified media that policy says must be reduced to particles.
Solid-state drives are the common trap: a normal overwrite can't reliably reach every flash cell because of wear-levelling and over-provisioning, so SSDs and NVMe are sanitised with the drive's firmware Sanitize command to IEEE 2883, or cryptographically erased if they were encrypted. We choose the method from the media and the data classification, verify the result, and record exactly what was done on the certificate — so “destroyed” is provable, not assumed.
A spreadsheet, an inventory, or just photos.
A written offer in AED, no obligation.
Across the UAE & GCC, chain of custody.
Data wiped, certificate issued, settled in AED.
Send us your list and we'll quote the hardware with certified data destruction included — an auditor-ready trail, and a payment for it.
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