More Than Risk Management With Secure IT Asset Disposition Services

An IT asset management plan dictates how IT assets are to be handled throughout their useful life and mandates the procedures that should be put in place to properly sanitize and dispose of the assets once they are no longer needed. While most people have some understanding of the risk management benefits that come with secure IT asset disposition services, there are a host of other advantages that come with proper management of IT assets at every stage of their journey.

With data breaches, medical data breaches, and cyber-attacks seemingly making the news daily, companies and organizations around the country are employing every resource available to secure their data and protect their customers’ information from being stolen. But for many organizations, the data security efforts finish once their IT assets are no longer in use. USB thumb drives are thrown away or sold, hard drives are “formatted” and disposed of, and other assets are recycled. But is this enough? 

IT Asset Disposition Starts with Effective IT Asset Management

Secure IT asset disposition services cannot operate on their own. Before asset disposition can take place, a robust IT asset management plan must be put into place and communicated to all parties. Such a plan must ensure that the challenge of disposing of unwanted IT equipment is handled properly and tailored to the needs of each individual IT asset.

The most effective IT asset management plans involve extensive input from stakeholders in a wide range of areas, including finance and procurement, occupational health and safety, risk management, the IT department, and even at an executive level. While executives may be skeptical about the necessity of their input on an IT asset management plan, it should be remembered that executives can be held personally liable for a failure to dispose of IT assets in a responsible way, especially if the breach involves risk to their customers’ personal data.

The majority of regulations that deal with secure IT asset disposition services specify that an IT asset management plan must be “reviewed and updated” on a regular basis, or “as needed,” which can typically be held to mean every year.

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The Benefits of Secure IT Asset Disposition Services

Data security is understandably the most important and perhaps obvious benefit of an IT asset management plan, with compliance with government and industry regulations being a newer concern.

Secure IT asset disposition services can do a lot more than simply mitigate risk and ensure government regulation compliance. IT asset disposition frees up space in working business areas and storage facilities, while managing environmental risks.

Reduced costs of storage are becoming a more common advantage of IT asset disposition, and since secure IT asset disposition service providers like All Green Recycling will dispose of your IT assets at your business premises at a time and on a day that suits you, costs of transport to a recycling facility are avoided.

Corporate responsibility remains another advantage, as proper disposal and recycling by a secure IT asset disposition services provider keep unwanted IT assets out of landfill.

Complying with Government and Industry Regulations and Standards

With new and highly-enforced government standards like FACTA and HIPAA regulating data security, and with some industries putting in place other non-enforceable yet monitored data security standards, an IT management plan that includes secure IT asset disposition services is essential.

A plan which includes data sanitization standards, IT asset disposition policies, vendor management, and employee training helps organizations to prove that they have taken reasonable steps to prevent data loss.

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How Secure Are IT Asset Disposition Services?

Some companies and organizations include provisions in their IT management plans that mandate that some kind of data destruction process must be undertaken before IT assets are handed over for final destruction. Hard drive formatting (which has been proven to be ineffective when it comes to data recovery), drive encryption, and physical damage like punching holes or striking IT assets with a hammer are common methods that are used to protect data prior to the asset’s destruction.

Choosing All Green Recycling as your secure IT asset disposition services provider renders these steps redundant, as All Green Recycling offers a number of solutions, including IT asset tracking and on-site shredding, to guarantee the safety of your IT assets from the moment they are collected from your premises until they are finally destroyed.

Interested in knowing more? Contact us today.

References

IT Asset Disposition Is the Future of Reverse Logistics

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