According to industry guidance such as NIST SP 800-88, which high-level action should an organization take to ensure that data on any storage device (including HDDs and SSDs) is rendered unrecoverable before the device is disposed of or leaves organizational control?
Sanitize the media before disposal
Disable the storage controller in the system BIOS
Delete all visible files and empty the recycle bin
Media sanitization is defined by NIST SP 800-88 as a process that makes access to the data infeasible. Sanitization can be accomplished by methods such as overwriting, cryptographic erase, degaussing (for magnetic media), or physical destruction, depending on the device. Simply formatting, deleting files, or disabling hardware does not guarantee that residual data cannot be recovered.
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What are the different methods of data sanitization?
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