List of new features in BCWipe v.3
- BCWipe v.3 allows user to wipe data with predefined DoD 5200.28-STD and Peter Gutmann wiping schemes, and now includes the Wiping Scheme Editor utility to view and edit number of wiping passes as well as binary patterns used in every pass. Now you can customize all the details concerning wiping process on your computer.
- New Swap File Encrypting utility is added to BCWipe v.3 system. Swap file is the Windows system file used for the virtual memory support, and it can store parts of documents, you were working with, in an opened form on hard drive. Even if some powerful encryption program encrypts an original document, Windows can put a whole document or part of it to the Swap file in an opened form. Encryption keys, passwords, and other sensitive information can also be swapped to hard drive. Even if you use all of the security advantages of the latest Windows versions, simple investigating of the Swap file in DOS mode may allow extracting a lot of interesting information from the file. Swap File Encrypting utility prevents such a leak in the operating system.
- BCWipe v.3 includes the BCWipe Task Manager utility. The utility allows configuring BCWipe to run some wiping tasks automatically. You can set a time for running the task, as well as special options for the task. For example, you can configure BCWipe to Wipe Free Space of all your hard drives at midnight every Friday and use US DoD 5200.28-STD wiping standard for the process.
- Automatic wipe of Recently Used Files List. You can configure BCWipe Task Manager to clear the List of Recently Used Files for selected programs. The function may be useful because of security reasons. For example, you can configure BCWipe to clear the list of recently opened MS Word documents, so if someone occasionally runs MS Word program, he/she will not be able to determine what documents you worked on.
- Wipe of Special System Folders at Start Up. Windows creates Special System Folders for different purposes, for example, for temporary Internet files or Cookies. Such folders cannot be deleted or wiped in usual way, because the operating system keeps them locked. You can configure BCWipe Task Manager so that the utility will automatically wipe selected folders at the time when the folders are not locked, i.e. when Windows starts up.
- Hibernation File wiping. Hibernation File supports transition of computer to the hibernation state. At that time system copies all the data stored in RAM memory, including opened sensitive documents, to the Hibernation File. To avoid the security leak you may configure BCWipe to wipe the Hibernation File regularly (read the Wipe Special Folders task type chapter).
- BCWipe v.3 recognizes and properly shreds alternate data stream in files, created on NTFS disks.
- Wiping process can be configured to perform additional actions, like writing main steps to a log file, shutting down computer or logging the current user off.
- Performance of wiping procedures in v.3 becomes at least 10% higher comparing with a previous version of the software.
- List of files and directories to be skipped when BCWipe wipes file slacks. Wipe of file slacks is a time consuming process. If we take into account that many files and folders are stored on disk for a long period, we can wipe slacks of such files once only, and then configure BCWipe so that the program will skip these files during Wipe File Slacks process. This BCWipe feature allows increasing an overall performance of the utility.