Exam SY0-501 topic 1 question 117 discussion

Exposing HDD's to magnetic is a sure fireway to erase data withour recovery since this is confidential data and having a software to do that does not guarantee obscurity of data after erasing. Magnetic strippers are inexpensive and dont need software upgrades so its cheaper in the long run.

The best thing to do is to shred the hard drive.

Deguassing

Which of the following methods would have MOST likely prevented the data from being exposed B is acceptable, but because we are going with MOST secure instead of MOST cost effective it's got to be D. They are looking for you to know what method is most secure Physical destruction ie shredding/pulverising (most secure but destroys) Magnetic field (most secure and HDD can be reused) Software to rewrite (Secure) If it wanted you to pick valid methods all three are good.

it is better to burn :)

WAS IN DUMPSTER...WHY NOT DEGAUSSE it? THINK PEOPLE! Do the equivalent of Documents you put in trash...since they dont give the SHREDDING option, use magnets and dispose....again, TWISTED TEA to ur head if you blow easy ones....then again, I dont need you competing for jobs, so UMM YEA, just click rewrite and head on back to Burger King....YES I NEED FRIES WITH THAT, WTF? lol

3 of the 4 answers are correct, typical comptia

most server in many company use RAID with HDD not SSD so the correct answer is D . The key work "One of the hard drive".

most server in many company use RAID with HDD not SSD so the correct answer is D . The key work "One of the hard drive".

A bit annoying that the question doesn't define, what kind of hard drive we're looking at. D would have no effect on an SSD, in which case B would be correct. So maybe B should be the "most likely" answer?

I know it's not what you expected but the answer is C. Using Blowfish encryption on the hard drives. Here is why. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/erasing-ssds-security-is-an-issue/ states that for SSDs, effectively deleting the encryption key makes the stored data useless. And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowfish_(cipher) states that Blowfish provides a good encryption rate in software and no effective cryptanalysis of it has been found to date. To conclude, if you encrypt the drives with Blowfish and then you destroy the key, you render them useless. Degaussing doesn't work with SSDs; overwriting works but not as efficient as encryption.

Since dumpster diving is mentioned, the drives were discarded with no intention for reuse. “Degaussing” renders the drive unusable and sanitises it. D is correct. It could have been B if the drives would have been reused

Agree with Nucleric and Meredith. Destruction is the best method, but not listed as a choice. Degaussing is the next best, but hard drive vendors don't post oersted ratings. From Data Security Inc. - "Myth: All degaussers erase disk drives. Fact: Most commercial degausser specifications claim a magnetic field strength of 4,000 Oersted (Gauss) or less, while most disk drives have coercivity ratings of 5000 Oersteds. To ensure complete erasure, a degausser’s magnetic field strength must be two to three times the Coercivity of the media. Therefore, a 4,000 Oersted (Gauss) degausser has barely enough strength to erase 2000 Oersted media, making a 4000 Oersted commercial degausser insufficient for proper erasure of today’s 5,000 Oersted hard disk drives." So, the "book" answer is D, but more correctly degauss and then destroy.

D. degaussing—The process of removing data from magnetic media using a very powerful electronic magnet. Degaussing is sometimes used to remove data from backup tapes or to destroy hard disks

B would not work for SSDs, physically destroying them is the most secure since the question does not specify.

This is the stupidest suggested answer I have seen so far. D might be possible, but in my whole life I haven’t seen someone doing it. I go for B “Using software to repeatedly rewrite over the disk space” https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/how-to-safely-destroy-an-old-hard-drive/ NIST Guidelines for Media Sanitization – P31 Magnetic Disks (flexible or fixed)Clear: Overwrite media by using organizationally approved software and perform verification on the overwritten data. The Clear pattern should be at least a single write pass with a fixed data value, such as all zeros. Multiple write passes or more complex values may optionally be used. https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-88r1.pdf

B achieves the same objective with no additional cost.