CISSP Question #653: Real Exam Question with Answer & Explanation

Question

Data remanence is the biggest threat in which of the following scenarios?

Options

• AA physical disk drive has been overwritten and reused within a datacenter.
• BA physical disk drive has been degaussed, verified, and released to a third party for dest.......
• CA flash drive has been overwritten, verified, and reused within a datacenter.
• DA flash drive has been overwritten and released to a third party for destruction.

Explanation

Data remanence refers to residual data remaining on storage media after sanitization attempts. Flash/SSD media is particularly vulnerable because overwrite methods are less reliable due to wear-leveling and block remapping.

Common mistakes.

• A. Magnetic disk drives can be reliably sanitized through multiple overwrite passes, and reuse within a controlled datacenter environment limits exposure risk even if minor remanence exists.
• B. Degaussing a magnetic disk drive destroys the magnetic domains that store data, making it the most effective sanitization method for HDDs, and third-party destruction under verified conditions further reduces any remanence risk to near zero.
• C. While flash media is susceptible to remanence, reuse within a controlled datacenter environment limits the exposure risk because the data remains under organizational control rather than being released externally.

Concept tested. Data remanence risks in flash storage media sanitization

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

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