Your enterprise asset lifecycle management is incomplete. Right now, you have a lot of visibility. You see the assets that come in, you see the assets in your data center, and you see the assets that have left. But what happens then?
The afterlife of enterprise asset management can kill you.
That new server smell is in the air. You’ve unpacked all of the brand new boxes. Setup, configuration, testing, and final deployment? All complete. You’ve decommissioned all of the enterprise IT assets that you’re replacing, and you’ve packed them and sent them on there way.
Unfortunately, you just sent a lot of your sensitive data with them. Remember, deleting your files doesn’t always mean that they’re gone.
Many enterprise assets are reborn into new roles after they are sold. After you’re done with them, they may live life as a file server; cloud webserver; or serving another, less intense purpose.
As long as you have data on the devices, you have a vested interest in what happens to them. After all, in most jurisdictions, you are still liable for any data leaks – even at this point in the lifecycle! So, you need to track your enterprise assets all the way through their lifecycle and into their afterlife.
When these devices move into the afterlife, you need to know where they are, and what’s happening to them at the individual item level. Anything that slips through the cracks represents a serious risk to your business.
You could hire a seer, do some chanting, wave your hands, and hope for the best…
…or you could establish a deeper level of communication with your enterprise asset lifecycle services provider. If they are a reputable company, they’ll have the information – it’s just about how they present it to you.
This isn’t a magic trick. Here at Apto, we use AptoPulse to track everything that happens to an asset from the moment that we know about all the way through the recycle, reuse, or resale process. We have also built out API integrations with some of our client’s IT asset management tools so that information can be shared between the two.
Frankly, it’s all about being transparent and responsible. We think it’s irresponsible for companies to hand off their equipment to a 3rd party without a plan for knowing the details of where it’s going, when the data has been securely (and verifiably) destroyed, and what happens next – be it recycling or resale repurposing to a good cause.