Smarter IT t Disposal: Getting Past the Green Angle by Pete Lorenco

Sooner or later, on your way to getting a replacement bottle for the water cooler, you're going to trip over the growing pile of old printers, laptops and fax machines in the supply room and just throw the whole thing into the trash.

If you did, you'd be in good company: According to the Environmental Protection Agency, only 38 percent of computers are properly recycled. The rest usually land in trash bins and eventually landfills or offshore dumping grounds.

These aren't very green or globally responsible options, right? No. And forgive me if the following is politically incorrect: Let's forget about that green stuff for now. But don't call Greenpeace just yet-I really do care about the environmental part of this. However, you can't be a business dedicated to saving the planet without first saving your business from potential ruin.

As an entrepreneur, know this: When you toss one of those smarter-than-you-thought devices into a dark supply room or a trash bin, you're not just being a lousy global citizen. You're also setting the stage for a costly and potentially fatal security breach.

Creating the Most Expensive Garbage Ever

Here are some sobering statistics:

A 2013 Ponemon Institute survey of U.S. small businesses found that 55 percent of respondents have had a data breach-and 53 percent had multiple breaches-because of lost, stolen or otherwise mishandled laptops, smartphones and storage media.

The average cost to a large company of a data breach was $7.2 million. Even if your business sustained a tenth or a twentieth of that damage, could it survive the fallout?

Don't feel bad about this possible blind spot in your hardware disposal knowledge. It's easy to overlook the details of information storage technology for peripherals as you're achieving new heights of business success. But now that you know, it's time to take action.

The process of secure IT asset disposition destroys the data on your devices, destroys the devices themselves, recycles and/or disposes of e-waste the right way, and delivers a chain of custody to give you a defensible record of the journey your devices have taken. It's a best practice that no business, large or small, can afford to overlook.

When you create and maintain a secure IT asset disposition plan, you're not only mitigating risks. You're also creating a more cost-efficient and lower-overhead technology plan-and yes, you're maintaining an admirable standard of environmental stewardship along the way. In fact, contrary to what a certain TV character used to say, it really is easy being green when you do it with a trusted partner.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2013/service-lines/small-business/smarte...
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