CISSP Question #1149: Real Exam Question with Answer & Explanation

Question

A company is enrolled in a hard drive reuse program where decommissioned equipment is sold back to the vendor when it is no longer needed. The vendor pays more money for functioning drives than equipment that is no longer operational. Which method of data sanitization would provide the most secure means of preventing unauthorized data loss, while also receiving the most money from the vendor?

Options

• APinning
• BSingle-pass wipe
• CDegaussing
• DMulti-pass wipes

Explanation

When drives must remain functional for resale, data sanitization must overwrite data without physically destroying the drive. Multi-pass wiping achieves strong security while keeping the drive operational.

Common mistakes.

• A. Pinning is not a recognized standard data sanitization method and does not describe a valid technique for securely erasing drive contents.
• B. A single-pass wipe overwrites data only once, which is considered less secure than multi-pass methods because residual magnetic traces may still allow partial data recovery using advanced forensic tools.
• C. Degaussing uses a strong magnetic field to destroy data by disrupting the magnetic domains on the drive platters, but this process renders the drive non-functional and unreadable, meaning the vendor would pay significantly less for non-operational equipment.

Concept tested. Data sanitization methods balancing security and drive functionality

Reference. https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-88/rev-1/final

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