Secure sanitisation and disposal of storage media
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How to ensure data cannot be recovered from electronic storage media.
Adapted edition
- Document type
- Reference Guide
- Format
- DOCX
- Pages
- 5
- Language
- English
- Version
- 1.0
- Updated
- 2026-09-16
- Category
- Information security
- Licence
- Open Government Licence v3.0
Description
How to ensure data cannot be recovered from electronic storage media for organisational planning, review and training. NCSC guidance is advisory and should be applied to the organisation's own risks and obligations.
Contents
- What is electronic storage media?
- What is sanitisation?
- When to sanitise media
- The risks of not sanitising
- Before you sanitise
- Preparing ESM for re-use
- For devices with encryption
- For devices without encryption
- For devices where data may remain
- Disposing of ESM
- Sample re-use and disposal policy
- Source links
Source and licence
National Cyber Security Centre
AttributionNational Cyber Security Centre, “Secure sanitisation and disposal of storage media” (23 September 2016), reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
ChangesAdapted 16 September 2026: converted the official HTML article into neutral text-only DOCX and PDF editions. Preserved article headings, paragraphs, lists and plain-text source-link destinations; normalized web whitespace and typographic punctuation; omitted site navigation, topic and download cards, images, logos, scripts, styles and page furniture.
Version history
- v1.016/09/2026