Andrew Sweeney
Data breaches of any kind have huge impacts on businesses. Not only do companies open themselves up to costly lawsuits, the adverse publicity that inevitably accompanies them can also have far-reaching consequences for your brand's reputation.
If you are charged with protecting your company’s assets, you’ll know these issues aren’t always caused by cyber hackers and malware. One of the largest investment banks was hit with a lawsuit after it had worked with an IT asset disposition (ITAD) vendor to dispose of equipment, only to later learn that data wasn’t fully wiped, and the equipment had subsequently gone missing.
The growing ecosystem of devices in an organization together with the rate that technology advances, means assets are replaced ever more frequently. The move to equipment being distributed more widely in employees’ homes since the COVID-19 pandemic has only added to the complexity of IT asset disposition.
To protect proprietary information, as well as customer and employee data, you need to incorporate a robust, transparent, and auditable ITAD process.
To ensure proper handling of IT assets before they enter disposal programs follow these steps:
Given the growing ecosystem of assets in any organization, to cut the number of processes, checklists, and tasks you are tracking, you should group assets by the disposal process you will use (e.g., shred onsite, wipe data and have vendor pick up, or vendor pick up and shred). You can also incorporate tasks associated with recycling or reusing your equipment and showing that you have disposed of it in a safe and environmentally responsible manner.
While a checklist will get you some of the way, it’s vitally important to keep on top of all your checklists for every asset that you dispose of. You can do this manually, but you’ll get bogged down in spreadsheets or make errors as you strive to monitor the progress of tasks done in house or by your ITAD vendors.
To simplify this and reduce risks of data breaches, you could consider adopting a platform that offers visibility at every stage of the program and uses automation to cut the effort and time associated with ITAD.
ReadyWorks offers you a way to centralize your ITAD processes and checklists and simplify tracking and monitoring to reduce the risk of data breaches and ensure clear accountability at every step. It does this by:
See how you can drive greater visibility and accountability into your IT asset disposal program to protect proprietary data and brand reputation and minimize security risks. Schedule a Demo with ReadyWorks.