Data Destruction & Disposal

Question 1

Physical Destruction

Answer 1

• Shredder
  
  • Heavy machinery ; complete destruction
• Drill / Hammer
  
  • Quick & Easy
  • Platters all the way through
• Electromagnetic (degausing)
  
  • Remove magnetic field
  • Destroy the drive data & the electronics

-Fire

Question 2

-Certificate of Destruction

Answer 2

• Destruction is often done by 3rd-party
• Service include certificate
• A paper trail of broken data

Question 3

Disk Formatting

Answer 3

• Low-level formatting
  
  • Provided at factory - not possible by the user
• Standard formatting / quick format
  
  • Sets up file system , installs a boot sector
  • Clears the master file table, but not the data
  • Can be recovered with the right software
• Standard formatting / regular format
  
  • Overwrites every sector with zeros
  • Cannot recover data / Windows Vista or later

Question 4

Hard drive Security

Answer 4

• File level overwriting
  
  • sdelete - Windows sysinternals
• Whole drive wipe secure data removal
  
  • DBAN - drive destruction