In today’s era, IT equipment is the backbone of any business. And proper maintenance of these types of equipment is crucial but quite challenging. Right from maintenance and upgrades until final disposition, every stage of managing the lifecycle of IT assets within a company brings forth a lot of unique challenges.
To handle the challenges related to IT asset management within an organization, IT asset disposition (ITAD) services play a major role. Modern organizations nowadays have started to understand the data security and environmental compliance risks related to disposition programs that do not follow strict processes.
Here are 5 most important steps of the IT asset disposition process:
Make an audit list of IT asset disposal –
Organizations must create a trial of electronic devices that are declared redundant and then maintain a record of each step taken to prove that all necessary actions were taken and that at no time was the information stored on the equipment in risk.
Protect the asset –
All the old equipment should not be kept in a general storage room instead it should be shifted to a secure location and tagged with all the important information related to its source. Most devices will already be recorded in the company’s asset register and have a barcode containing the details like make, model, tracking number serial number, IP address, date of purchase, and others.
Organize secure disposal –
In a corporate setup, IT equipment disposal is not carried out in a fragmented manner. On one hand, the decision is taken to change the entire generation of equipment by updating it to modern versions. On the other hand, it could be decided to dispose of old equipment including computers, data storage systems, or other devices. Here is where the need for an IT asset disposal service provider is hired to handle the disposal process. If in case the devices are not very old, they may be quoted with a resale value and moved in the asset disposition process.
Destroy stored data
Prior to the physical disposal of the IT equipment, all the sensitive and confidential information should be meticulously cleaned. It is not enough to delete the data or to reformat the disk because if the data are overwritten with some random information they can still be recovered using innovative forensic techniques. After the process of destroying, the IT asset disposal service provider should give a Certificate of Data Destruction, ensuring that no previous information is recoverable.
Reconcile records and accounting information
The last step in the IT asset disposal process is to update IT equipment inventory with details of the destruction and reconcile the accounting records. The inventory must show details like date and manner of disposal and any money gained to adjust depreciation and the fixed assets register.
