Data sanitisation is a key aspect to any organisations dealing with data storage media and who want to ensure that unauthorised parties do not gain access to their data.

Data sanitisation has to do with the safe removal, treatments and disposal of sensitive information from storage media devices to guarantee that retrieval and reconstruction of data is not possible or may be very difficult to reproduce as some forms of sanitisation will allow you to re-use the media, while others are destructive in nature and render the media unusable.

There could be many reasons why an organisation may want to sanitise its data:

• Re-use purposes – new user device allocation, re-purpose or resell device.

• Repair purposes - return or repair faulty device

• Disposal purposes – dispose of device

• Destruction purposes – destroy information held on device or the device itself.

There are risks associated with improper sanitisation as key data may still remain on the device, such as:

• Sensitive data may end up with the wrong people who can expose the sensitive data

• Loss of control over information assets

• Private or personal data could be leaked and used to commit fraud or identity theft.

• Intellectual property could be used leading to reputational loss

Whilst this may not be entirely a sanitisation issue, it is part of it and one way to combat these risks is using encryption.