Slate: Certified Data Sanitisation Platform

Different media types require different sanitisation methods. You can't overwrite an NVMe SSD the same way you overwrite a spinning hard drive. The wear-levelling controller and over-provisioned NAND mean a block-level overwrite may not reach every physical cell. NVMe Format with cryptographic erase is the correct approach.

Slate handles this automatically. When a drive is connected, the system identifies the interface type, queries the drive's capability set, and selects the most effective sanitisation method that meets the configured compliance level. Operators see a clear confirmation of what will happen before it starts, but they don't need to make the technical decision themselves.

Every method concludes with a full verification pass: a block-level read of the entire drive to confirm the sanitisation was complete. No certificate is issued unless verification passes. A failed verification triggers an automatic re-wipe and alert.

We obsessed over the operator experience. Most data sanitisation tools look and feel like compliance teams built them. The UIs are dense, the workflows are confusing, and the error messages read like legal briefs.

Slate's touchscreen interface is designed for the person doing the work, often an IT support technician, a warehouse operator, or a volunteer at a device recycling charity. Big touch targets. Clear status indicators (colour-coded: blue for in progress, green for passed, red for failed). Plain-English confirmations at every step.

The NFC badge tap for authentication means operators don't need to type passwords on a touchscreen. The barcode scanner links the physical asset tag to the digital record without manual data entry. The thermal printer sticks a label on the drive the moment it passes, with a QR code that links directly to the certificate in Slate Cloud.

The full workflow (badge tap, connect drive, scan asset tag, confirm wipe, wait, print label) takes under 90 seconds for a typical NVMe SSD including the verification pass.

A certificate is only useful if you can find it three years later at audit time. Slate Cloud is a web portal that stores every sanitisation certificate in a centralised, searchable, tamper-evident ledger.

Every certificate is cryptographically signed at generation (SHA-256 hash + RSA-2048 signature) and stored in an append-only data structure. Certificates cannot be modified or deleted after creation. The integrity of the ledger is verifiable by any auditor with the public key.

For air-gapped environments, certificates are stored locally on the Appliance and exported via encrypted USB transfer. When the USB is connected to a network-accessible machine, certificates sync to Slate Cloud automatically. The chain of custody is maintained throughout. Every certificate includes the timestamp, operator ID, device details, method used, and verification result, regardless of how it reached the portal.

The portal provides fleet-wide visibility for compliance officers and IT managers: how many drives have been sanitised this quarter, by which operators, using which methods. Anomaly detection flags unusual patterns: a sudden spike in failed wipes, an operator sanitising drives outside business hours, a device serial number that appears twice.

Audit-ready report generation exports data in the formats that NIST, ISM, and ASD assessors expect. No manual compilation, no spreadsheet wrangling. Click, download, hand to auditor.

The portal also exposes a REST API for integration with existing ITSM and CMDB platforms: ServiceNow, Jira Service Management, Freshservice. When a laptop is flagged for decommission in your ITSM, the sanitisation status can be tracked and verified programmatically without logging into a separate portal.

Slate is in production use across defence contractors, government agencies, and enterprise IT departments in Australia. The Appliance runs in IT disposal rooms, security cages, and warehouse loading docks. Slate Boot runs across end-of-lease laptop fleets at companies that process thousands of device returns per quarter.

Early adopters report an 80% reduction in per-drive sanitisation cost compared to external vendors. More importantly, they now have complete traceability: every drive, every wipe, every certificate, searchable and auditable. Several organisations have used Slate Cloud reports to pass compliance audits that previously required weeks of manual evidence compilation.

One defence contractor told us their previous process involved boxing up drives, couriering them to a vendor, waiting two weeks for certificates, and manually entering the results into a spreadsheet. With Slate, the same drives are sanitised on-site in an afternoon, and the certificates are in the portal before the operator finishes their shift.

The air-gapped deployment model has been particularly well-received in defence environments. The ability to operate with zero network connectivity, and sync certificates later via encrypted USB, solves a problem that no other product in the market addresses well.

We're currently developing Slate Destroy, an extension for physical destruction verification. A camera module photographs the destroyed media, generates an evidence package, and links it to the same certificate chain, closing the last gap in the audit trail for media classified at levels that require physical destruction.