Clearing the pagefile to wipe sensitive data

From the archives: Jesper on 'Clearing the pagefile to wipe sensitive data"

"How do we mitigate the threat of sensitive data in page files. Page files are basically an on-disk repository of data that was in memory but not needed right at this moment. The system will page the data to disk, into the pagefile, to allow apps to use more memory than what the system really has.

This obviously can cause a security problem if an app stores sensitive data in memory and that piece of memory gets spooled to disk. If so, a bad guy can read it from there. This threat is not new and affects all operating systems that use virtual memory. However, how big a threat is it really?"

Jesper [a security expert working for Microsoft] goes on explaining this threat, and the likelihood and probability of it. And if indeed it is a threat to your organization, then he explains how to mitigate it. Read on...