You need to discard magnetic hard drives containing Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Which method for removing PII from the magnetic hard drives is considered best?

A.
Overwrite every sector on each drive with zeroes

B.
Delete sensitive files

C.
Degauss and destroy

D.
Reformat the drives

Explanation:
Answer C is correct; degaussing and destroying the hard drives is considered most secure. It offers high assurance that the data has been removed, and visual inspection of the destroyed drives provides assurance against errors made during the destruction process.

Incorrect Answers and Explanations: A, B, and D: Answers A, B, and D are incorrect; they all offer weaker protection against exposure of the PII on the drives. Overwriting the disk provides reasonable protection, however errors made during the overwriting process will not be evident from visual inspection. Deleting sensitive simply removes the File Allocation table (FAT) entry; the data usually remains as unallocated space. Reformatting the drives replaces the entire FAT with a new one, but the old data usually remains as unallocated space.