Design and Development of an Integrated Secure Data Erasure and Advanced File Recovery Tool for Digital Forensics and Data Sanitization

• Background With the rapid growth of digital storage technologies, organizations, government agencies, law enforcement units, enterprises, and individual users face two major challenges: securely destroying sensitive data to prevent unauthorized recovery and recovering deleted digital evidence during forensic investigations. Existing solutions generally focus on either secure data deletion or file recovery and often support limited storage technologies and file systems. This forces investigators and cybersecurity professionals to use multiple tools, increasing complexity, cost, and operational inefficiencies. Therefore, there is a need for a unified platform that integrates secure data sanitization with advanced forensic-grade file recovery and carving capabilities. • Description The proposed solution aims to develop an integrated software platform consisting of three core modules: (1) Secure Drive Eraser, (2) Secure File & (3) Folder Eraser, and Advanced File Carving and Recovery. The Secure Drive Eraser Module should securely sanitize HDDs, SSDs, USB drives, memory cards, and external storage devices while providing verification mechanisms, audit logging, tamper-resistant reporting, and compliance with industry and government data destruction standards. The Secure File and Folder Eraser Module should enable selective secure deletion of files and folders, remove associated metadata and residual traces, support batch operations, verify erasure success, and provide audit reporting across multiple file systems and operating systems. The Advanced File Carving and Recovery Module should recover deleted files from formatted, damaged, or corrupted media using signature-based, structure-based, and intelligent carving techniques. It should support recovery without file system metadata, fragmented file reconstruction, automatic classification of recovered files, confidence scoring, and comprehensive forensic reporting while preserving evidential integrity. • Expected Solution The expected outcome is an integrated software platform that combines secure data sanitization and forensic recovery capabilities within a single environment. The solution should provide (1) secure drive erasure with verification and reporting, (2) secure file and folder deletion with metadata cleansing, (3) advanced file carving and recovery from formatted media, support for multiple storage devices and file systems, automated classification and validation of recovered files, comprehensive audit logs and forensic reports, a user-friendly graphical interface, and compliance with forensic and data sanitization standards. Expected deliverables include an integrated software tool, (1) Secure Drive Eraser Module, (2) Secure File and Folder Eraser Module, (3) Advanced File Carving and Recovery Module, Reporting and Audit Management System, User Interface Dashboard, validation and testing documentation, user manuals, technical documentation, and performance evaluation reports. The solution should improve secure data disposal practices, reduce the risk of unauthorized data recovery, enhance forensic investigation capabilities, increase recovery rates from damaged storage media, reduce investigation time, improve compliance and auditability, and provide a unified platform for secure sanitization and forensic recovery operations.