Corporate IT managers and company directors often remark about how quickly old IT equipment becomes obsolete. Even computers that were being used as recently as two or three years ago can seem slow given today's demands. As digital technology becomes ever more advanced, so businesses need to reinvest in their networking and other IT equipment.
This leaves you with an important consideration, however. What do you do with all of your old devices? If you simply throw them away, then ask yourself what data might be stored on them which could be accessed by a determined thief? Equally, simply chucking out old computers and tablets is not the most environmentally responsible thing to do. There are options available to you, however.
What Do You Need to Do?
Disposing of old IT equipment means making a proper asset disposal plan. Firstly, plenty of consumer electronics, including office IT equipment, is covered under electronic waste disposal regulations, known as WEEE. As such, you must store your old IT equipment until it can be disposed of responsibly. Any storage facility you use must be secure so that people are not able to access or remove hard drives which, even if they don't contain lots of data, may provide access to your servers.
With your equipment ready to be processed, the next step is to call in an expert in secure IT asset disposal. This is not a job that your in-house IT team will usually have the resources for, especially if they are engaged in the rollout of new IT equipment. Even if you do have sufficient manpower, it is important to bear in mind that secure IT disposal is a specialist job which requires a great deal of expertise. Your average IT officer will not possess the necessary skills to do the thorough job of data cleansing that needs to take place. Once you have found a suitable contractor, the IT equipment can be removed from your site. Ensure that every item is accounted for and signed off as having gone into the hands of your appointed contractor.
What Happens Next?
Once your IT equipment has been signed over, it will be processed in a systematic way that meets all the requirements for your company to comply with General Data Protection Regulations as well as WEEE. The first thing that will happen is that any device that is capable of holding data will be subject to a deep clean. This does not mean scratching a hard drive on-ce or twice so it cannot be immediately read but thoroughly destroying it so that any form of subsequent data retrieval is impossible.
Once the important data security measures have taken place, the equipment can then be reprocessed in accordance with the WEEE directive. This may mean that your old computers or some of their components, at least, see a new lease of life. Emphatically, they only do so when it is clear that no data breach could possibly occur. To find out more about outsourcing your IT cleansing requirements, call Absolute IT today on 01332 371 989.
