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SilverbackDestruction Services

Certificate of Destruction

The document your file needs, not the one that looks nice

Most certificates in this industry are a logo, a date, and the word 'destroyed'. That satisfies nobody in an audit. A certificate is only worth what the record behind it can prove, so ours is generated from the custody entries and lists everything an auditor would otherwise have to ask for.

What it must contain

Ten fields. Compare any vendor’s certificate against this list — including ours — and the gaps tell you what their record keeping actually looks like.

The custody record behind it
  1. 01

    Certificate and work order number

    Ties the certificate back to a specific custody record, so an auditor can pull the underlying entries rather than taking the certificate on faith.

  2. 02

    Date and time of destruction

    A date alone lets a vendor issue the certificate before the work. A timestamp reconciles against the route log and the plant camera.

  3. 03

    Parties and addresses

    Who the material came from, where it was collected, and at which facility it was destroyed. An off-site certificate that does not name the plant is unverifiable.

  4. 04

    Seal numbers

    The thread through the whole chain. Every seal on the certificate must appear on the custody record, and the counts must match.

  5. 05

    Description and quantity of material

    Container counts and verified weight. For media, the individual serial numbers, because a weight ticket cannot answer 'where did drive X go'.

  6. 06

    Method of destruction

    Named specifically — cross-cut shred, disintegration, pulverization — not the word 'destroyed'. The method is what a regulator tests against.

  7. 07

    Standard applied

    NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 2 and the sanitization category. Without the standard, the method is an assertion rather than a measurement.

  8. 08

    Witness and operator identifiers

    Who performed it and who observed it. CJIS work usually requires the second pair of eyes to be identified.

  9. 09

    Attestation and authorised signature

    A named signatory attesting that custody was unbroken and the material is unrecoverable. This is the part that carries legal weight.

  10. 10

    Retention statement

    How long the underlying record is kept and how you get a copy. A certificate whose evidence has been deleted is a piece of paper.

Sample

The certificate, as issued

Every identifier below is a format demonstration. Silverback has not performed work for any customer, so there is no real certificate to show and inventing a customer name would defeat the point of the page.

SampleFormat demonstration. Not a record of work performed.

Silverback

Destruction Services

Certificate of Destruction

SB-COD-0000

Issue

Certificate number
SB-COD-0000
Work order
SB-WO-0000
Date of destruction
2026-08-24
Time of destruction
10:14:02 CDT

Parties

Issued to
Sample requesting activity
Collection point
Sample collection point
Destruction facility
Silverback plant — address on the service agreement

Material destroyed

Containers received
4 consoles · 1 media tote
Seal numbers
SB-441702 – 441706
Verified weight
412 lb
Serialised media
6 hard disk drives, listed on Annex A

Method and standard

Method — paper
Cross-cut shred to the equipment manufacturer specification
Method — media
Disintegration — platters will not engage
Standard applied
NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 2 — Destroy
Witnessed by
OPS-03, second operator. Customer witness available on request.

Attestation

Silverback Destruction Services certifies that the material described above was destroyed on the date and by the method stated, that custody was documented and unbroken from collection to destruction, and that the destroyed material cannot be read, reconstructed, or recovered. The underlying custody record is retained for seven years and is available to the customer on request.

Authorised signature

Printed name and title

NAICS 561990 · PSC R614 · silverbackdestructionservices.com

Annex A — serialised media

Where drives, tapes, or handsets are destroyed, the certificate carries an annex listing each device by manufacturer, model, serial number, and the asset tag it carried in your inventory. That annex is what lets a property officer close a line item, and it is the single most common thing missing from a competitor’s paperwork.

The underlying custody record is retained for seven years and released to the customer on request, including the exception entries.

Request a sample with your quote