You should erase data sets that contain sensitive data by overwriting them with zeros before their space is made available. This can either be done before issuing the SCRATCH macro, or be requested in scratch processing by performing one of the following:

• Providing an associated RACF® profile ERASE attribute
• Activating bit 21 (X'00 00 04 00') of the SCRATCH parameter list. See Table 1.

Authorized callers of SCRATCH can prevent erasure of the data by setting bit 22 to 1, which overrides the RACF profile ERASE attribute.