The Most Secure Way to Dispose of Information on a CD-ROM

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First you have to realize that the question is specifically talking about a CDROM.The information stored on a CDROM is not in electro magnetic format, so a degausser woud be inneffective.

You cannot sanitize a CDROM but you might be able to sanitize a RW/CDROM.A CDROM is a write once device and cannot be overwritten like a hard disk or other magnetic device.

Physical Damage would not be enough as information could still be extracted in a lab from the undamaged portion of the media or even from the pieces after the physical damage has been done.

Physical Destruction using a shredder, your microwave oven, melting it, would be very effective and the best choice for a non magnetic media such as a CDROM.

Source: TIPTON, Hal, (ISC)2, Introduction to the CISSP Exam presentation.

When disposing of information stored on a CD-ROM, it's important to ensure that the data is completely unrecoverable to prevent unauthorized access. Of the options provided, physical destruction is the most secure method of disposing of information on a CD-ROM. This is because physical destruction ensures that the information is completely irretrievable.

Physical destruction can be achieved by shredding or melting the CD-ROM into small pieces, which makes it impossible to retrieve any information from the disk. Once the disk has been physically destroyed, it cannot be reconstructed, and any data stored on it is rendered completely unrecoverable.

Sanitizing and degaussing are other methods of disposing of information on a CD-ROM, but they are not as secure as physical destruction. Sanitizing involves overwriting the data on the disk with random characters to make it difficult to retrieve the original information. However, it's still possible for skilled attackers to recover the original data, particularly if the disk is not properly sanitized.

Degaussing involves exposing the disk to a strong magnetic field to erase the data stored on it. While this method is effective in most cases, it's not foolproof, as some types of data can still be recovered from a degaussed disk with the right equipment.

Overall, physical destruction is the most secure way to dispose of information on a CD-ROM, as it ensures that the data is completely unrecoverable.