Home » ITAD Services

IT Asset Disposition: What Is ITAD and Why It Matters

Businesses have long counted on computers, mobile phones, and modern technologies to streamline everyday workflow, enhance communication and collaboration, store and manage data, and achieve productivity and efficiency while keeping their overhead costs low.

With rapid technological advancements, high turnover rates among devices, and evolving work environments, companies tend to accumulate electrical and electronic equipment over time. Perceived to be of no use and piled in a corner, some electronic devices inevitably end in landfills or incinerators. The proof is the growing global problem of electronic waste.

IT asset disposition (ITAD) presents a secure and safe solution for companies to dispose of their unwanted or old equipment. Learn how ITAD can help your business effectively manage tech assets and minimize environmental impact.

First off, What Is IT Asset Lifecycle Management?

Every product has a lifetime, which depends on durability, usage, and obsolescence. It can be a challenge for companies to monitor every single software or hardware that they use or retire.

To that end, businesses can implement or use IT asset management to track their IT equipment and realize the most value of their investment. There are five stages of an asset lifecycle:

Purchase or procurement
Deployment
Maintenance
Support
Retirement and disposal

The last stage, also called the end of life, is in the territory of IT asset disposition.

What Is ITAD?

IT asset disposition encompasses solutions or practices for environmentally sound and safe disposal of the following and more:

Laptops
Phones
Printers
Monitors
Scanners
POS machines
Desktop computers
Hardware for data center

Replacing equipment or maybe decommissioning a data center is part of a business’s life. A refresh or upgrade to newer systems may be necessary to keep up with growth or prove to be more cost-effective based on asset turnover ratio and other financial indicators.

Asset Recovery

IT asset disposition also refers to the business itself with ITAD companies providing a range of solutions. There’s asset recovery, which can provide client companies with a revenue stream because they can get money out of the retired assets, minus the costs of recycling or other services offered. IT asset remarketing, or IT asset recovery, may be part or separate from the vendors’ suite of ITAD services.

The common goals of ITAD are the following:

To protect business data
To prolong or extend the useful life of devices
To provide proper recycling methods
To promote compliance with environmental and data protection standards
Let’s break down the concepts below.

Data Security

It’s a world where data is expected to reach 44 zettabytes by 2020. Businesses deal with data more than ever, as they collect, process, and use the information to gain insights about their customers, develop products, and make business decisions. They have a myriad of options to store data, including cloud storage for big data and hard drives and other storage media for backup.

Accordingly, ITAD vendors are to clear or eliminate all personally identifiable (PII) information left in the devices. Data erasure protects the clients’ information and reduces the risk for data breach before these units are resold or recycled.

Data Destruction Methods:

Data destruction is a critical aspect of ITAD. It must be done correctly (or left to the experts) to avoid regulatory penalties and meet data security standards, primarily these:

US Department of Defense (DoD): DoD 5220.22-M specifies a way to sanitize and overwrite HDDs and other storage devices to prevent file recovery using software and hardware. The standard has changed with this version of DoD 5220.22-M, noting that the destruction of media must be in compliance with Cognizant Security Office’s guidance.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): NIST Special Publication 800-88 Revision 1 is a known standard in media sanitization. It aims to help organizations make decisions on how to “render access to target data on the media infeasible” with the method of sanitization based on the confidentiality of the information and the media type. The standard also factors whether the media will be reused or recycled into the data-sanitization decision-making process.

Product Life Extension

E-waste is generally defined as devices that have reached their useful life, which may be a matter of perception because some can still be reused or repurposed. Extending their lifetime/life span means less waste for the world and more value for money for individuals or institutions looking for refurbished items.

Usually, after doing the data erasure/wipeout of information, ITAD providers check the items’ value and viability for a resale. To remarket assets, the vendor repairs or refurbishes the viable items to ensure that these are in tip-top condition.

It is also ITAD vendors, directly or through their networks, that find new owners or sell these refurbished items in the market. Asset-recovery arrangements, such as revenue-sharing and buy-back programs, can vary by vendors.

E-waste Recycling

E-waste poses human and environmental effects. Improper or informal recycling methods, like burning, can release toxic materials in the environment and may cause respiratory or cardiovascular diseases.

As part of ITAD, items that have no resale value or are not working are usually those that get recycled or disposed of properly.

Through proper recycling methods, raw materials are extracted from electronics and made into new products. It’s not much to say that one can strike gold in recycling electronics. A UN study placed the value of gold, palladium, and other metals found in e-waste worth $64.61 billion.

Recycling efforts are also to be lauded. Nonprofit organization WorldLoop stated that, “for every ton of e-waste that has been collected and recycled, 1.44 tons of CO2 emissions have been avoided.”

Environmental Responsibility

Commercial entities can’t simply dump their unwanted or old equipment in the landfill. They can face steep fines or penalties from government agencies, aside from facing risks from discarding equipment with sensitive information.

The decision to take advantage of asset disposition for IT equipment boils down to responsibility to the environment with tons of electronic waste thrown out every day. ITAD strategies aim for compliance with environmental laws and sustainable management of company resources.

In addition, IT asset disposition is also part of the circular economy, according to the World Economic Forum: “Waste does not exist: products are designed and optimized for a cycle of disassembly and reuse.”

Where to Find an ITAD Company

While vendors vary with its suite of services; core ITAD services are as follows:

Pickup and collection
Data destruction and protection
Asset recording and tracking
Asset recovery and remarketing
Recycling and disposal

Logistics is a roadblock for some businesses to haul off their retired assets for disposal. PC Liquidations can pick up and move the gear to their facilities for recycling, data security, and value recovery. For more information on our services, contact us today.

What IT asset disposition or ITAD services does your company need?

ITAD Services request form at bottom like the recycling one.