Hard drives containing sensitive medical data found in flea market

A batch of second-hand hard drives purchased at a flea market contained medical data for hundreds of patients; the drives originated from a bankrupt Dutch medical software provider that apparently failed to follow mandated secure decommissioning and erasure procedures. The report outlines secure-erasure options (single/multi-pass overwrites, NIST 800-88, firmware secure erase, degaussing for HDDs, and physical shredding), highlights legal/regulatory expectations in the Netherlands, and recommends measures such as proper destruction and use of data-removal services to reduce exposure.