Today, we will address the longstanding question of whether it is safe for businesses to pass on used IT assets to new employees. This question has been plaguing the IT community for decades now as not every business is blessed with enough capital to provide new employees with fresh IT assets. Providing a new employee with a brand-new desktop PC, tablet, smart phone and laptop is simply not practical for the majority of companies. On the other extreme, directly assigning the IT assets of a previous employee to a new starter is also fraught with risk. Without disparaging the trustworthiness of the new employee unnecessarily, a business IT asset will always be populated with personal and business information that could be put to malicious use fell into the wrong hands.

Risks Of Reusing Old IT Assets

Giving a new employee access to used IT equipment will provide the employee with unprecedented access to business information which might even be above their competency or job role requirements. The employee might not commit a fraud for his or own benefit, but might make mistakes which allow hackers to infiltrate your network. The employee might not even be aware that their unit has crucial information which can be used against themselves or the business.  

The Middle Way…

In practice, most businesses enact a phage between the two extreme options. The new employee might be given a new smart phone, but may inherit a laptop, whose hard drive is hastily restored to factory conditions. These measures may not be enough to prevent a data security breach…

In most cases, sensitive information is securely hidden inside the unit, but that does not mean that this information cannot be retrieved. This is why it is imperative that every business first invests in data cleansing services before providing new employees with used IT assets. These services are designed to wipe all the data from a device so that a business can reuse them internally or resell the units to raise capital.

Why Should Business Invest In These Services?

Some businesses may consider investing in an external data sanitisation service to be an unnecessary cost, especially if they already have an IT team in place. But what they have to realise is that these services might save the business from a lot of trouble.

For it to be effective, data cleansing requires a high degree of skill, knowledge and experience – as well as access to the right tools. Using the right software, in the right way, guarantees that the device will be completely wiped, ensuring that none of the crucial data is still saved on the unit. Simply wiping a hard drive does not remove the data; it simply scrambles the access links while leaving the files themselves intact. With the right software, a hacker can de-encrypt these links and access the data files, even from a supposedly blank hard drive. This is also why it is dangerous to dispose of an IT asset without it being efficiently shredded - and why there are hidden dangers to free IT recycling services that do not provide a complete chain of accountability.

Reuse Your IT Assets With Complete Peace Of Mind

To get maximum value from your IT assets, it makes sense to reuse them for the benefit of new employees. So that your business is not exposed to unnecessary data security risks, make sure you invest in a data cleansing service before you do so. When working with an established data security specialists such as Absolute IT, data cleansing is affordable and convenient, with a transparent process that ensures your data is safe at every stage of the process. For a free quote, please email info@absoluteitad.com, or call 01332 371 989 for more information.