Until recently, electronic equipment has been leading two separate IT lives. When functioning and managed by a vendor company, it’s known as “managed services” or “IT Service Management” (ITSM). When the equipment is replaced, disposed of or taken offline by a company, it’s called IT Asset Disposition (ITAD).
Simply stated, ITSM manages and services current IT hardware and software. ITAD manages and disposes end-of-life hardware. Each service category operates within the parameters of its own tracking and management systems.
That “out with the old, in with the new” philosophy worked well for decades. When ITSM departments chose to discard obsolete electronic equipment, they contacted disposal companies who “securely” removed it for destruction or sanitization. The ITSM department lost holistic control during the handoff, but it didn’t matter too much because the regulations surrounding data breaches and disposal processes varied from state to state and country to country with none of them being particularly onerous. Over time, however, the risks associated with having company data exposed on it’s used or discarded equipment has grown exponentially.
GDPR Rules
Along came the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) to up-end the “out of sight, out of mind” approach. In one fell swoop, The European Union’s regulators strengthened and defined penalties for data breaches from “slaps on the wrist” to enforceable, stiff, multi-million dollar fines as well as publicized damage to the brand reputation. Today, businesses and institutions need more end-to-end electronic asset control and better-documented chains of custody.
ITSM and ITAD Synergies
It makes sense to integrate ITSM and ITAD systems & services as many companies are doing, some of them perhaps without even knowing it. If you work with an IT managed service provider or ITSM and they partner with a qualified ITAD specialist like Castaway Technologies, you are already having best practices applied to your entire electronics lifecycle – birth to retirement. In fact, a good question for your IT service provider is, “What exactly happens to each electronic asset that gets replaced or is otherwise retired from service? Ideally, they’ll provide a clear and documentable answer.
When ITSM and ITAD are combined, these independent but synergistic systems offer the ability to keep track of inventory and review electronic equipment anywhere in the lifecycle, including units in storage or disposal. You can identify specific electronic assets, schedule pickups, view inventory, obtain certifications of data destruction, generate audit reports and more. Think of ITSM and ITAD integration as a one-stop IT/electronic asset management solution.
The Need for Total Control
In the age of aggressive data thieves and ever larger data breaches, it makes legal, financial, brand and IT sense to exert total control of all your electronic assets, no matter where they are in their lifecycle.
Castaway Technologies provides complete ITAD solutions that safeguard our clients’ retired IT assets and mitigate risks involved with handling retired equipment and devices. You can further safeguard your network by integrating our ITAD solution into your ITSM system for more complete control.
Focused on a closed-loop process, Castaway’s proprietary CastTRAC program enables the successful disposal or repurposing of a company’s retired IT, data center or other electronic assets all while protecting the data, complying with laws and regulations and recovering costs from serviceable equipment and components.
If you’d like to discuss integrating Castaway’s added-value ITAD service into your company’s ITSM system, please contact one of our ITAD Specialists for more information at (978) 208-4370 or contact us online.
