US 10,649,682 B1Granted

Focused sanitization process for deduplicated storage systems

AssigneeEMC IP Holding Company LLC

InventorsRamprasad Chinthekindi, Shah Veeral, Abhinav Duggal

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

Described is a deduplicated storage system that may perform a focused sanitization process by reducing the number of data storage containers that must be sanitized. The system leverages additional characteristics of the files that need to be sanitized such as an initial storage date (e.g. data breach date) of when a sensitive file (e.g. file to be sanitization) was actually stored on the deduplicated storage system. By maintaining a creation date of data containers, the system may limit sanitization to those containers having a creation date on or after the initial storage date of the sensitive file. Accordingly, the system is capable of performing a more focused overwriting of data thereby improving the overall efficiency of the sanitization process.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A computer-implemented method for sanitizing data stored in a storage system, comprising:

receiving an indication to sanitize a file from a deduplicated storage system, wherein the deduplicated storage system stores files as data segments across one or more storage containers;
deleting the file from the deduplicated storage system, wherein deleting the file from the deduplicated storage system includes unreferencing the data segments of the deleted file, wherein the unreferenced data segments are interpreted as dead segments by the storage system;
determining an initial storage date of the file, wherein the initial storage date is based on one or more attributes associated with the file;
determining a set of candidate storage containers having at least one dead segment and a creation date on or after the determined initial storage date of the file;
copying live segments of the candidate storage containers to a new set of corresponding storage containers, wherein an enumerated file index determines which segments stored in the deduplicated storage system are the live segments;
and
sanitizing the candidate storage containers by overwriting physical data blocks of the live and dead segments of the candidate storage containers.

4 more elements

A system, comprising:

a memory storing instructions;
and
a processor coupled to the memory to execute the instructions from the memory, the processor performing operations, comprising:
receiving an indication to sanitize a file from a deduplicated storage system, wherein the deduplicated storage system stores files as data segments across one or more storage containers;
determining an initial storage date of the file, wherein the initial storage date is based on one or more attributes associated with the file;
determining a set of candidate storage containers having at least one dead segment and a creation date on or after the determined initial storage date of the file;
copying live segments of the candidate storage containers to a new set of corresponding storage containers, wherein an enumerated file index determines which segments stored in the deduplicated storage system are the live segments;
and
sanitizing the candidate storage containers by overwriting physical data blocks of the live and dead segments of the candidate storage containers.

6 more elements

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations, comprising:

deleting a file from a deduplicated storage system, the deduplicated storage system stores files as data segments across one or more storage containers, wherein deleting the file from the deduplicated storage system includes unreferencing the data segments of the file, wherein the unreferenced data segments are interpreted as dead segments by the storage system;
receiving an indication to sanitize the file from a deduplicated storage system;
determining an initial storage date of the file, wherein the initial storage date is based on one or more attributes associated with the file;
determining a set of candidate storage containers having at least one dead segment and a creation date on or after the determined initial storage date of the file;
copying live segments of the candidate storage containers to a new set of corresponding storage containers, wherein an enumerated file index determines which segments stored in the deduplicated storage system are the live segments;
and
sanitizing the candidate storage containers by overwriting physical data blocks of the live and dead segments of the candidate storage containers.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.