CAS-003 · Question #342
A systems administrator has installed a disk wiping utility on all computers across the organization and configured it to perform a seven-pass wipe and an additional pass to overwrite the disk with ze
The correct answer is A. The hard disk contains bad sectors. A properly executed multi-pass disk wipe, including a final zeroing pass, should overwrite all writable sectors. If the auditor still finds readable data after such a thorough wipe, the technical explanation is the presence of bad sectors. Bad sectors are physically damaged areas
Question
A systems administrator has installed a disk wiping utility on all computers across the organization and configured it to perform a seven-pass wipe and an additional pass to overwrite the disk with zeros. The company has also instituted a policy that requires users to erase files containing sensitive information when they are no longer needed. To ensure the process provides the intended results, an auditor reviews the following content from a randomly selected decommissioned hard disk:
Which of the following should be included in the auditor's report based in the above findings?
Options
- AThe hard disk contains bad sectors
- BThe disk has been degaussed.
- CThe data represents part of the disk BIOS.
- DSensitive data might still be present on the hard drives.
How the community answered
(23 responses)- A57% (13)
- B13% (3)
- C26% (6)
- D4% (1)
Explanation
A properly executed multi-pass disk wipe, including a final zeroing pass, should overwrite all writable sectors. If the auditor still finds readable data after such a thorough wipe, the technical explanation is the presence of bad sectors. Bad sectors are physically damaged areas of the disk that the operating system and wiping utilities mark as unwritable and skip - meaning data residing in those sectors is never overwritten. The auditor's finding indicates bad sectors allowed data to survive the wipe, and this finding should be reported to explain the sanitization failure and flag potential data remanence risk.
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