Patent ID: 8504532

Claim:
A computer implemented method for deletion of data in a remote cloud computing platform, the method comprising: designating at least one most significant bit of at least one data block in a set of data stored in the remote cloud computing platform as a sentinel, wherein: the set of data is stored by the user in the remote cloud computing platform; the at least one most significant bit is randomly selected; and the remote cloud computing platform is accessible by means of a communication network and possesses one or more computational resource nodes, the computational resource nodes in operable communication with each other; recording a first value of the at least one sentinel; shredding the set of data, wherein the set of data is shredded by means of an update operation, the update operation capable of executing one or more operations selected from a group consisting of read, write and execute operations on the set of data; and verifying success of the shredding of the set of data, wherein a second value of the at least one sentinel is recorded and compared with the first value of the at least one sentinel.