MA.L2-3.7.3  

Reference: CMMC 2.11

Family: MA

Level Introduced: 2

Title: Equipment Sanitization

Practice:
Ensure equipment removed for off-site maintenance is sanitized of any CUI.

CMMC Clarification:
Sanitization is a process that makes access to data infeasible on media such as a hard drive. The process may overwrite the entire media with a fixed pattern such as binary zeros. In addition to clearing the data an organization could purge (e.g., degaussing, secure erasing, or disassembling) the data, or even destroy the media (e.g., incinerating, shredding, or pulverizing). By performing one of these activities the data is extremely hard to recover, thus ensuring its confidentiality.

If additional guidance on which specific sanitization actions should be taken on any specific type of media, consider reviewing the description of the Purge actions given in NIST SP 800-88 Revision 1 - Guidelines for Media Sanitization.

Example
You manage the IT equipment that is used for your organization. A recent Department of Defense (DoD) project has been using a storage array for DoD Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). Recently the array has experienced disk issues. After troubleshooting with the vendor they recommend several drives be replaced in the array. Knowing the drives may have CUI information you plan to run software on the drives using software that performs a wipe pattern that removes any data and device protection across the entire drive. Once all the drives have been wiped you document the action and ship the faulty drives to the vendor.

Source: CMMC v2.0