WipeDrive and the IT Asset Lifecycle

Featured article by Paul Katzoff is the CEO of WhiteCanyon Software

The assets of your company or organization are constantly being cycled through the stages of active use, upgrade, or disposal. When we discuss IT assets including servers, laptops, and mobile devices, managing the security of the data these assets contain often requires disk wipe software like WipeDrive to allow secure disposal at end of life.

(H2) What Is the IT Asset Lifecycle?

Information technology assets go through stages that guide the procedures needed to protect company-owned information and sensitive customer data. Effective lifecycle management promotes the timely replacement of equipment and reduces the total cost of ownership.

The stages of the IT asset lifecycle are:

– Planning, where the requirements for new assets are identified based on accurate evaluation of existing assets and their usage. With proper planning, the process itself can be streamlined to reduce the costs of asset management.

– Acquisition, where the best source of the required IT assets is identified or designed. Leveraging internal and external resources, the right computers, servers, laptops, or tablets are sourced and purchased, making the most effective use of the available IT budget.

– Operation and maintenance, when the asset is in active use by the business or data center. Scheduled maintenance extends the useful life of IT assets, and reallocating resources within the organization with the use of disk wipe software maintains data security during these transitions.

– Disposal, which is often planned as assets become obsolete or are deemed at high risk of failure. Those servers or computers which fail unexpectedly will also need to go through the disposal process. Assets may be physically destroyed or have all data erased using a certified disk wipe software.

(H2) Data Destruction in the Disposal Stage

Most IT assets contain data worth protecting and, in many industries, complete data destruction is required. Without the use of certified NVMe, SSD and hard drive disk wipe software, physical destruction of the equipment may be needed.

Many organizations see the benefits of completely sanitizing data using WipeDrive and donating their used IT equipment. These steps offer advantages over physical destruction, including:

– Donating equipment to non-profit organizations for tax benefits

– Reducing the cost and security risk of the physical hard drive destruction process.

– Lowering the impact on the environment of IT asset disposal, keeping equipment out of landfills, and reducing the costs of environmental fees for business

– Keeping proprietary business data and sensitive customer information safe from restoration or reconstruction with a certified hard drive disk wipe as part of the disposal phase

(H2) What Is WipeDrive?

WhiteCanyon’s WipeDrive software uses techniques approved by government and international agencies to completely erase data by overwriting it using certified data sanitization technology. Unlike simply deleting business or personal data through the Recycle Bin, using WipeDrive will ensure that data cannot be recovered.

Data centers and small businesses alike use WipeDrive to meet or exceed all regulatory requirements for their industries, and then go on to recover some of the cost of their retired IT assets through donation or resale. If you need or your business needs to improve your asset maintenance and disposal, WhiteCanyon has a solution for you.

With Enterprise, Small Business, and even Mobile products available, we have the data security solutions you need. So rarely do peace of mind, environmental awareness, and improving the bottom line go together. Contact us today to make asset disposal a positive step in your process.

About the Author

Paul Katzoff is the CEO of WhiteCanyon Software, a cybersecurity software firm in Salt Lake City, Utah, that focuses on secure data erasure of IT assets – https://www.whitecanyon.com/assets/images/info/execteam_paul.png.

 WhiteCanyon Software has been providing data security tools since 1998. It is based in Utah and all Sales, Support and Development is performed at their Utah location.  The programming has never been outsourced and the source code has never left the USA. www.WhiteCanyon.com