9.4.6 Destruction of hard-copy materials

Hard-copy materials containing cardholder data must be destroyed once they are no longer required for legal or business purposes, in this way: they are shredded with a cross-cut shredder, burned or pulped so the cardholder data cannot be reconstructed; and while awaiting destruction they are kept in secure storage containers (the guidance suggests, for example, locked to-be-shredded bins). Applicability: these media destruction rules are separate from Requirement 3.2.1, which deals with securely deleting cardholder data once it passes the entity's retention period. Objective under the customized approach: no one can retrieve cardholder data from media once destroyed, or from media still awaiting destruction.

Source: PCI DSS v4.0.1, 9.4.6. The statement above is our statement of the clause, read from the published text and cited so you can check it against the official text, not the instrument verbatim. Open PCI DSS v4.0.1 in the compliance library.

Version 4.0.1 is the active version; 4.0 has been retired. Appendix A1 applies only to multi-tenant service providers, A2 only to card-present POS POI terminals that still use SSL or early TLS, and A3 only when a payment brand or acquirer requires it. Which requirements apply to you follows your validation type.