Date Published: July 21, 2025
Comments Due:
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Author(s)
Ramaswamy Chandramouli (NIST), Eric Hibbard (Samsung Semiconductor)
Announcement
Sanitization refers to a process that renders access to target data on the media infeasible for a given level of effort. This guide outlines the important elements of a sanitization program to assist organizations and system owners in making practical sanitization decisions based on the sensitivity of their information.
Important changes in this revision of SP 800-88 include:
- Focus is shifted to establishing an agency or enterprise media sanitization program
- Sanitization technique descriptions are replaced with recommendations to comply with the latest relevant standards
- Security assurance is improved through sanitization validation, which determines the effectiveness of sanitization from a confidentiality and sensitivity perspective
- The concept of logical sanitization is included to consider the presence of storage media in modern computing environments (e.g., the cloud)
- References section is updated to include the latest versions of documents and remove obsolete ones
The public comment period is open through August 29, 2025.
NOTE: A call for patent claims is included in the front matter of this draft. For additional information, see the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) Patent Policy – Inclusion of Patents in ITL Publications.
Media sanitization refers to a process that renders access to target data on the media infeasible for a given level of effort. This guide will assist organizations and system owners in setting up a media sanitization program with proper and applicable techniques and controls for sanitization and disposal based on the sensitivity of their information.
Media sanitization refers to a process that renders access to target data on the media infeasible for a given level of effort. This guide will assist organizations and system owners in setting up a media sanitization program with proper and applicable techniques and controls for sanitization and...
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Media sanitization refers to a process that renders access to target data on the media infeasible for a given level of effort. This guide will assist organizations and system owners in setting up a media sanitization program with proper and applicable techniques and controls for sanitization and disposal based on the sensitivity of their information.
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Keywords
cryptographic erase; ensuring confidentiality; media sanitization; media types; sanitization tools and methods; secure erase
Control Families
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