A company has a policy to repurpose its storage devices internally before considering disposal. When preparing storage devices that were used for sensitive projects for repurposing within a less critical department, which measure should be employed to minimize the risk of data exposure?
Perform a standard antivirus scan to ensure the absence of malware.
Degauss the drives to disrupt the magnetic field and render the data unreadable.
Reformat the drives using the quick format option to prepare for immediate reuse.
Conduct a secure erasure conforming to a stipulated industry standard for data sanitization.
The correct measure when repurposing storage devices that previously contained sensitive data is to conduct a secure erasure process that adheres to industry standards (e.g., NIST SP 800-88), ensuring that the data recovery is not possible without extraordinary measures. Degaussing is also a method to sanitize data, but it's suitable for magnetic drives only and might not be practicable for solid-state drives (SSDs). Reformatting the drive is not secure enough, as most standard formatting procedures leave data recoverable. Running a standard antivirus scan, although important for detecting and removing malware, does not address the need to prevent data recovery from the storage device.
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