Which of the following poses the GREATEST privacy risk to personally identifiable information (PII) when disposing of an office printer or copier?

A document left on the platen glass is a transient, physical risk limited to a single document and is easily mitigated by a visual inspection before disposal, making it far less significant than persistent stored data.

Network configuration information (e.g., Wi-Fi credentials, IP settings) is an organizational security risk but does not directly constitute PII and therefore does not represent the greatest privacy risk to personally identifiable information.

Many modern multifunction printers and copiers contain an internal HDD that persistently stores images of every document processed - potentially thousands of pages of PII accumulated over the device's lifetime. Unlike volatile or physically limited risks, an HDD can be retrieved, mounted, and forensically analyzed by a malicious actor after disposal, exposing massive amounts of sensitive data. NIST SP 800-88 specifically addresses the need to sanitize storage media, including HDDs in networked peripherals, before disposal.

While transfer rollers can retain faint toner impressions of recently printed pages, the imprints are typically fragile, degraded, and limited to the last few pages processed, making this a minimal and impractical risk compared to a searchable HDD full of stored documents.