EvidenceSheet
PCI DSS v4.0.1 · Req 9: Restrict Physical Access

9.4.7 Destruction of electronic media

Electronic media containing cardholder data must be destroyed once no longer required for business or legal reasons, using one of these methods: the media itself is physically destroyed; or the cardholder data is made unrecoverable so it cannot be reconstructed. The guidance notes that standard operating system deletion usually leaves data recoverable and gives secure wiping to industry standards, degaussing or physical destruction such as shredding or grinding disks as examples. 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. Customized approach objective: no one can retrieve cardholder data from media after it has been wiped or destroyed.

Source: PCI DSS v4.0.1, 9.4.7. 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.

4
artefacts
1
held by a system
2
at each review
moderate
to go live
Endpoint management (MDM / EDR)
where the evidence lives
teal = a system already holds it · olive = produced at each review. To go live: easy when half or more of the artefacts are already held by a system, moderate from a quarter to a half, hard below a quarter.

These are the artefacts auditors commonly ask for on this requirement, our guidance rather than text from the standard. Your assessor decides what is sufficient in your context, and asks for samples across the period when a report covers one.

system holds itEvidence a system already holds

  • Wipe tool reports or degaussing logs identifying each device by serial number · Endpoint management (MDM / EDR)

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

  • Certificates of destruction from an IT asset disposal vendor · Vendor register / contract repository
  • Reconciliation of decommissioned drives against the media inventory · Data governance / DLP tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

  • Electronic media sanitization procedure referencing an industry standard such as NIST SP 800-88 · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Start with the 1 of 4 artefacts that already live in a system (Endpoint management (MDM / EDR)); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Do this for your whole sheet

Paste the rows you run your controls from and get this mapping for every control at once, with the periodic-review ones flagged and a first move per row. No account for the first run.

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9.4.6 Destruction of hard-copy materials · 9.5.1 Protection of POI devices from tampering