Which of the following is the BEST practice to protect data privacy when disposing removable backup media?

The correct answer is B. Data sanitization. Data sanitization (e.g., secure wiping, degaussing, or physical destruction) permanently removes data from the media so it cannot be recovered. Encryption (A) alone is insufficient for disposal - if the encryption key is later compromised or a flaw is found, the data could still

Data Life Cycle

Question

Options

AData encryption
BData sanitization
CData scrambling
DData masking

How the community answered

(55 responses)

A
4% (2)
B
87% (48)
C
2% (1)
D
7% (4)

Explanation

Data sanitization (e.g., secure wiping, degaussing, or physical destruction) permanently removes data from the media so it cannot be recovered. Encryption (A) alone is insufficient for disposal - if the encryption key is later compromised or a flaw is found, the data could still be recovered from the media. Data scrambling (C) and data masking (D) are techniques for obfuscating data in use or in transit, not for disposal - they do not guarantee that the original data is unrecoverable from the physical media. Sanitization is the recognized standard (e.g., NIST SP 800-88) specifically for end-of-life media.

Topics

#Data disposal#Media sanitization#Data lifecycle management#Data protection

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