ISC2 Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) Practice Question

For self-encrypting media, NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 states that destroying or deleting the encryption key constitutes a Purge-level sanitization because the data become unreadable even if the physical blocks remain. Cryptographic erase is almost instantaneous and involves no additional writes, so it minimizes SSD wear and cost. Single-pass overwrites may not fully sanitize SSDs due to wear-leveling and take much longer. Shredding the drive is a Destroy method that removes the asset from service entirely, increasing cost and downtime. ATA Secure Erase or trim may fail if issued through a virtualized storage layer and still incurs additional program/erase cycles on the SSD. Therefore, cryptographic erase by deleting the volume's key is the most appropriate choice.