Media Sanitization Standard
Directorate/Department:
Information Technology
Functional Category:
Computing & IT
Policy Author/Contact:
Cathy Singh
View Permission:
SLAC-only
Last Updated:
Thursday, May 7, 2025

Many organizations have suffered data breaches when data from used media devices has been recovered by people not authorized to access the data. This standard defines requirements for sanitizing SLAC media of all types before disposal. Computer media can be hard drives, removable drives, optical media, flash memory, USB drives, or any device used to store information. Used media represents a risk to the confidentiality of SLAC data, if disposed of improperly. This risk is because recovery of data from media, even when the data has been deleted, is still possible.