Data Destruction

• Physical destruction involves methods such as drilling, shredding, degaussing, and incinerating to render the data on a drive irrecoverable.
• Data destruction can be outsourced to third-party vendors who provide services such as certification of destruction/recycling for liability purposes.
• Degaussing involves using a large magnet to remove data from the disk, making it unrecoverable.
• Low-level formatting is the best practice for recycling or repurposing data storage devices, as it helps to erase data completely from the drive.
• Drilling: Using a drill to break the platter in the drive.
• Shredding: Use a device to shred the drive into small pieces.
• Incinerating: Melts the drive.
• Purpose of Certification of destruction/recycling: Liability purposes
• Overwriting: Ensures that data cannot be recovered while keeping the storage media useable.