Secure IT t Disposition: Data Security by Jay Livens

I have blogged about the challenge of managing retired IT assets in numerous posts. There is no doubt that with today's growing data volumes and shortening hardware lifecycles, companies struggle to manage legacy devices. This problem will only get worse in the future. A comprehensive IT asset disposition strategy is critical to ensure that information security is maintained and assets are disposed of properly. But what happens if you don't have a consistent plan or rely on an insecure supplier? The results can be challenging. In this blog, I will explore the challenges and share some recent survey findings.

Managing IT asset end-of-life is critical to ensure that retired hardware is managed properly. An example of a failed case is a health system who leased multiple copiers for its internal use. Copiers, like laptops, smart phones, voicemail systems and fax machines, incorporate internal storage that contain information that was printed, scanned, emailed, recorded or otherwise processed. Do you ever wonder what someone would find if they could access your copier's hard drive? Well, the health system later found out. See, they leased their copiers and when the lease expired they returned the office equipment, hard drive and all. Unfortunately, the next owner of the copier decided to explore what could be found on its hard drive. Amazingly, the new owner was able to access to 300,000 patient records that had been left on the copier. In today's strict world of medical regulation and privacy, an unexpected release of hundreds of thousands of medical records is a serious security breach and the health system ended up getting charged over $1 million for this unfortunate incident. Clearly this situation could happen to any company and the risk is multiplied when you think of all the unused phones, laptops, servers and disk arrays stored in data centers.

You would think that a financially damaging situation like the one described above would create significant urgency and awareness around asset disposition, but you would be wrong. In fact a recent study of over 100 end users revealed the following:

As you can see just under 50% of respondents indicated that they either don't have a consistent asset disposition strategy or have one and don't follow it. Every one of these companies is facing the potential risks of fines and lawsuits as experienced by the health system. The lack of consistency is troubling and yet it is not reflective of a lack of concern on the part of business and IT leadership as illustrated in the following pie chart.

In the image, we see that 75% of IT and business leadership are either very concerned or concerned about their organization's ability to securely dispose of IT assets. This is an interesting dichotomy since we saw earlier that just under 50% of end users follow a consistent disposition plan. You might wonder why companies are not pursuing consistent strategies and fortunately the survey results are illuminating here as well.

This bar chart shows the top five reasons why companies do not rely on a third party for asset disposition. It is not a surprise that cost leads the list at 45% because users often incorrectly perceive that third party providers are more expensive. The reality for many is quite different. Iron Mountain's Secure IT Asset Disposition service provides the powerful benefit of securely erasing data on unneeded assets and then refurbishing and reselling those units at a profit which is shared with the customer. The result is that customers can recognize significant value through the disposition process. In fact, some are finding that they are realizing significant profits from the activity.

In closing, I would encourage you think about your IT asset disposition strategy. Are you in the 50% who has a plan and follows it or in the 50% who does not? In either case, it is vital to understand the asset disposition process and what happens to your proprietary corporate information after your assets are decommissioned. A little extra time and energy on this process now can save you millions of dollars later.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2014/uncategorized/secure-it-asset-dispo...
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