NIST 800-88 Documentation
Destroying hard drives “in compliance with NIST” requires specific reporting details. A NIST 800-88 Certificate of Destruction must include the hard drive make, model, serial number and type as well as the parent computer’s serial number. This means you must be able to identify the computer in which you removed the hard drive from.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed Guidelines for Media Sanitization – NIST 800-88. This document assists organizations in implementing a media sanitization program consistent with the security level of the information to be destroyed.
The NIST 800-88 “Guidelines for Media Sanitization” paper includes a sample Certificate of Destruction as well as a list of requirements. The main sections of the certificate include the person performing the sanitization, media information, sanitization details, media destination and destruction verification. NIST 800-88 compliance, among other things, the make and model of the hard drive as well as the source computer. Basically, there needs to be a documented link from the hard drive being destroyed to the computer and/or user.
The following document is only a portion of the guidelines set forth by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. We have worked with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to destroy digital media for NASA in accordance with NIST 800-88. See our process for digital media destruction.
Ask us about a NIST Certificate of Destruction
NIST 800-88 Required Documentation
NIST 800-88 compliance goes beyond the method of destruction the company has decided on. Compliance requires proper reporting and documentation. The often-overlooked reporting requirement is the linking of the hard drive to the parent computer. This link is called the parent-child relationship.
Chapter 4.8 of the NIST 800-88 Guidelines for Media Sanitization details the documentation requirements. The Certificate of Sanitization, shown below, is a good example of how the report may look.
