The Importance of Secure IT Asset Disposal

After your computer/laptop breaks down, what do you do with it? Do you retire it to your IT Department?  Do you send it to the IT cemetery in the sky?  Before taking any step for retirement of your IT equipment, you must consider all of your old files, data, and pertinent client information.

The problem lies in understanding the risk of any IT asset that could be reused or resold.  Many security professionals are involved in asset management and theft prevention…not in the proper, certified process of destruction of IT equipment.

In most instances, companies throw the equipment away…or so they think.  Employee theft tops the list of risks associated with IT asset disposal.  They may not be targeting the data, but taking the equipment, while data is still on it because it hasn’t been cleaned properly or effectively, prior to discarding same, is a major breach of data security.  Organizations spend millions in protecting data from hackers, but just one computer carries a liability risk amounting to millions of dollars.  Every IT department should have a policy to destroy data before IT assets are moved or potentially destroyed.