Bridging the Gap in IT Asset Management
At this point, most companies have implemented an IT asset management (ITAM) solution to help them manage IT assets, both hardware and software, when they are online. These solutions track a great deal of information such as health, rackspace, location, licenses, and many more which help companies best utilize and protect these assets when they are online.
Eventually these assets need to be removed from the enterprise. They may have failed or need to be upgraded, need to be destroyed or recycled, put on a legal hold, or go somewhere else. Most commonly, an IT asset disposition (ITAD) vendor comes to dispose of your assets. What we have found is that companies lack automated processes to manage assets between the ITAM solution and the ITAD vendor.
Before they reach their final disposition destination, they need to be managed properly while they are offline to ensure they don’t get lost, misplaced or stolen. Companies can bridge the gap between their ITAM solution and an asset’s final disposition destination with a solution that verifies exactly what happens when assets are offline.
It is important to bridge the gap because IT assets are valuable, even when they are offline, and they may even contain sensitive data. Offline IT assets should be managed with the same efficiency and security as they are awarded when they are online, because if they are not managed properly, you expose your company to increased risk, time and costs. Excess costs and time can be the result of something as drastic as a data breach, or something as common as audit asking for a report. Without automated processes, it is much more difficult to prevent a data breach because it nearly impossible to have visibility into the process, verify chain of custody and control your assets.
There are many examples of companies who were attempting to manage their offline IT assets, but due to the fact they had manual processes or none at all, they found themselves exposing sensitive information. When companies experience a data breach, they pay inordinate amounts of money in fines and litigation expenses; and, have to recover from negative exposure and the loss of customers. It is important to have automated methods so companies can account for all their offline assets and that they are being managed appropriately.
Accounting for the status, location, ownership, and history of offline IT assets is especially important for companies in heavily regulated industries. By implementing processes for documenting changes to offline assets, companies can have a full history of actions performed on the assets. Then, if the time comes, when audit needs to be presented with a report, they can print out a defensible audit trail. Even on assets that were already destroyed. Companies don’t want to discover assets that they thought were already destroyed, and not be able to account for what really happened to the asset.
B&L Associates’ AssetAware software solution enables companies to efficiently and securely manage offline IT assets. By automating and standardizing workflows that assets take after they go offline, companies can have the most efficient and compliant way to move, store, and protect valuable, and potentially data bearing, assets. Learn more about AssetAware or start a free trial!
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