Which of the following is the BEST way to prevent the loss of highly sensitive data when disposing of storage media?

Physical destruction, such as shredding, incineration, or pulverization, renders the storage media completely unusable and ensures that highly sensitive data cannot be recovered by any means. This is the most secure and definitive method for preventing data loss from disposed media.

Degaussing effectively wipes magnetic media but might not be effective for all types of media (e.g., SSDs) and may not guarantee complete unrecoverability for highly determined adversaries.

Data anonymization alters data to obscure identity, but the original sensitive data might still exist on the medium.

Simple data deletion typically only removes pointers to data, leaving the actual data recoverable with forensic tools.