U.S. flag   An unofficial archive of your favorite United States government website
Dot gov

Official websites do not use .rip
We are an unofficial archive, replace .rip by .gov in the URL to access the official website. Access our document index here.

Https

We are building a provable archive!
A lock (Dot gov) or https:// don't prove our archive is authentic, only that you securely accessed it. Note that we are working to fix that :)

Computer Security Resource Center

Computer Security Resource Center

This is an archive
(replace .gov by .rip)
    Glossary
A  |  B  |  C  |  D  |  E  |  F  |  G  |  H  |  I  |  J  |  K  |  L  |  M  |  N  |  O  |  P  |  Q  |  R  |  S  |  T  |  U  |  V  |  W  |  X  |  Y  |  Z

degauss

Definition(s):

  To reduce the magnetic flux to virtual zero by applying a reverse magnetizing field. Degaussing any current generation hard disk (including but not limited to IDE, EIDE, ATA, SCSI and Jaz) will render the drive permanently unusable since these drives store track location information on the hard drive. Also called “demagnetizing.”
Source(s):
NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 under Degauss

  To reduce the magnetic flux to virtual zero by applying a reverse magnetizing field. Also called demagnetizing.
Source(s):
CNSSI 4009-2015 [Superseded] from NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1