Study. uk . com
  1. Home
  2. All questions
  3. Question 14

CISSP study material · question 14 of 500

A hospital is retiring 400 laptop drives that held patient records. The security manager argues that only physical shredding can count as sanitisation and that a verified overwrite is worthless. The media sanitisation lead answers by citing the standard's own test for when media counts as sanitised. Which principle does the lead cite?

  1. Media is sanitised only when the storage device has been physically destroyed beyond any mechanical reassembly.
  2. Media is sanitised when the file system index has been rebuilt and the occupied space is reported as unallocated.
  3. Media is sanitised when a fixed number of overwrite passes has been applied to every addressable block on the device.
  4. Media is sanitised when recovering the target data has been made impractical against an assumed level of attacker effort.
Show the answer

Answer: D. Media is sanitised when recovering the target data has been made impractical against an assumed level of attacker effort.

Sanitisation is measured by the effort an adversary would need, not by a technique; a fixed pass count is a superseded rule of thumb, not the standard's test.

Source: NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 2 (NIST) — SP 800-88 Rev. 2 > Abstract

Challenge yourself on this topic → Study as cards