IT Asset Management

Information technology asset management (ITAM) broadly involves the procurement, maintenance and end-of-life destruction of a company’s software, hardware, tablets and mobile devices. Information technology managers are also in charge of:

  • Regularly auditing inventory of hardware devices used by the company
  • Monitoring and tracking of data, videos, images, scanned images and all other digital assets
  • Ensuring software is fully licensed, constantly updated and in compliance with industry regulations
  • Monitoring of mobile devices used by employees (app downloads, phishing schemes, etc)

Another major component of information technology asset management involves the financial data encompassing technology assets. IT asset handling for finance managers is concerned with the collecting, storing and securing of everything from price paid for all assets, vendor identification, quantities purchased and depreciation estimates. In fact, information technology asset finance management may be the most important task assigned to an ITA manager.

Before purchasing hardware, software or tablets, ITA finance managers do research regarding the return on investment percentage of a particular asset. For example, if an ITA manager needs to buy hardware for a new department opening at their company, that manager will first investigate the hardware’s features, ROI estimates, memory storage, obsolete factor and technical specs.

Obsolescence of IT Assets: How to Properly Eradicate Data and Dispose of Hardware

Information technology assets each possess an obsolete factor that refers to its expected life cycle. ITAMs keep a close eye on their obsolete inventory, or inventory items that are near the end of its life cycle. Hanging onto obsolete computers and their associated components poses three basic problems for ITAMs: obsolete assets will either directly or indirectly reduce company profits; they will negatively impact the ability of a company to stay competitive; and they will quickly become easy targets for cybercriminals to hack, intrude and steal sensitive data.

Organizations are solely responsible for the safeguarding of company and customer information while that information is stored on mainframes. Companies that fail to ensure hard drives are either wiped clean or shredded before disposing of them are risking the chance that a major security breach could bring operations to a complete halt.

What is Data Remanence?

Attempting to remove hard drive data using software that claims to “erase” data can leave residual copies of digital data on the hard drive. Referred to as data remanence, this residue is often left behind after nominal deletion operations or reformatting of hard drives that doesn’t remove previously written data. Insufficient erasure of data remanence on hard drives can be easily extracted by sophisticated hackers who search for hard drives carelessly tossed into an organization’s dumpster.

Completely obliterating stored digital data can only be accomplished through more thorough techniques such as those provided by Potomac eCycle: media destruction, degaussing and shredding.

Shredding technology assets is one of the best methods for ensuring all sensitive data can never be accessed after disposal of such assets. Potomac eCycle shredders totally destroy digital equipment by grinding and shredding them into minute particles. This makes hard drives, tablets, cell phones, flash drives and CDs permanently inaccessible and impossible to repair.

Potomac eCycle also issues customers who have their digital assets shredded a certificate of data destruction. This document verifies the destruction of storage media and that it can no longer be repaired or accessed through other means. It is our guarantee to our customers that the destruction of all hard drives or other items have been accounted for and confirmed. In the event a customer’s technology assets have been erased through other means, the certificate of data destruction will state which method was used to sanitize and dispose of the assets.

Call Potomac eCycle today for more information about Information technology asset management and our data destruction and recycling services.

Share This