Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) Practice Exam

What technique uses strong magnets to scramble data on magnetic media such as hard drives and tapes?

1. Crypto-shredding

2. Degaussing

3. Encryption

4. Homomorphic Encryption

The correct answer is: Degaussing

The technique that uses strong magnets to scramble data on magnetic media such as hard drives and tapes is degaussing. This process effectively disrupts the magnetic fields that encode the data on these storage devices, rendering the information unreadable. Degaussing is often used when organizations need to securely erase sensitive data to prevent unauthorized access or retrieval once the storage media is repurposed or disposed of. Unlike other data destruction methods, degaussing does not rely on software to overwrite data but instead uses physical means to alter the media itself. While other methods like encryption and homomorphic encryption involve ways to protect or manage access to data, they do not physically alter the storage media in the same way that degaussing does. Crypto-shredding refers to securely deleting encryption keys to make the data inaccessible without irreversibly altering the data itself, unlike the physical alteration achieved through degaussing. Thus, degaussing is the clear answer in this context for its specific focus on physically scrambling magnetic data.