At Your Disposal: Getting Rid of Old Computers

Be the go-to company when your SMB clients clean house. Here's how.

By Carolyn Heinze

We may live in a disposable society, but when it comes to hardware, throwing something away involves a bit more than a trip to the dumpster or curb. For solution providers, this provides an additional opportunity to be the go-to company when your SMB clients clean house.

As is the case with many other appliances, there are laws and regulations governing the legal disposal of computer hardware. Computers contain a number of hazardous materials, and the ideal solution is to turn them over to a professional recycling group that specializes in disassembling and disposing of them. Many recyclers are often reusers: When they acquire the equipment, they refurbish it for resale.

This is where the all-important practice of data destruction comes into play. Company computers contain records of the business in the form of emails, contracts, and accounting information. In many cases, these machines are passed down the line from employee to employee, and are often left to collect dust in a back office before someone takes the initiative to get rid of them. By the time that day arrives, the concept of wiping the hard drives clean may not be taken into consideration.

Ideally, each piece of hardware that exists within an organization is tagged and tied into an inventory management system so that there is a record of its condition and who is using it. Once the equipment is slated for disposal or resale, companies should follow a decommissioning process whereby the data is erased from the drives. "Depending on the level of security awareness at a company, it could be as simple as running a disk-cleaning program," says Richard Stiennon, an IT security expert from the vendor community who recently started "Stiennon on Security," a blog for Network World. "You want to overwrite all of the file space, over and over, with 1s and 0s. That is the approved way of getting rid of a computer and still allowing it to be usable."

Time-crunched SMBs, however, may not have a decommissioning procedure worked out, and this is where solution providers can play a role in hardware disposal through the development of a hardware lifecycle program. "It's a great opportunity for a reseller who is supplying the equipment in the first place to offer lifetime management services so that the computer is taken care of and typically replaced every three years," Stiennon says. "You can do that with leasing programs, where your customer base pays you on a monthly basis, and you make sure that they have up-to-date computer equipment. Then every three years you replace equipment and assure [customers] of proper data destruction before you take the equipment off-premises."

By destroying data (and, of course, providing proof that you have done so), resellers can take advantage of an additional revenue stream: "You can recycle and resell them as well to another third party," Stiennon says. "There is a huge business in taking recycled computers and shipping them overseas."

One development that has yet to run its full course is related to portable storage technology, such as thumb drives. "These are becoming valuable commodities. You don't throw out a thumb drive. You store it in a drawer and keep it in case you need it to hand off a file to somebody," Stiennon says, adding that many of these devices store potentially sensitive data. "That is an issue that hasn't really come back to bite us, but in the future it certainly will."

CAROLYN HEINZE is a freelance writer and editor and regular contributor to ChannelPro-SMB.