Data security means keeping data out of the wrong hands. This is especially important when storage media is no longer usable and needs to be decommissioned. The data must be truly destroyed, for both security and compliance. The best general practice for end-of-life data destruction calls for degaussing magnetic media, wiping solid state media and physically destroying each with the appropriate shredder. The deep end of the data destruction pool is data sanitization, which combines absolute and tamper-proof verification.”]
Source: https://securityintelligence.com/articles/data-destruction/