Most organizations today replace their computers every 4-5 years to maximize their team's productivity, protect against unplanned downtime due to wear, and ensure their computers are free from known hardware vulnerabilities.

When your organization gets new equipment, what happens to the old stuff? What is your end-of-life process?

An improper end-of-life process is bad for the environment and puts your organization at risk.

Data Danger

Data is highly lucrative on the black market. If your computers are sold, donated, thrown away, or recycled without proper disposal of data, the information saved on, or even temporarily cached on, those computers can be easily recovered. With free and low-cost tools available today, even budding criminals can access, save and sell this data on the dark web.

Virtually all types of information are valuable. We all know the obvious ones like intellectual property, trade secrets, banking/credit card information, and medical records. But many people don't think about other valuable types of data such as browser cookies/history, chat conversations, photos, and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) concerning customers, employees, volunteers, donors etc.

If any of this data is recovered/stolen from a device that previously was used by your organization, this constitutes a data breach, and your organization will be held responsible.

License Violation

The software you use daily is licensed to you by its creator and by using it you are bound by a license agreement. In most cases, when you license software for your organization, you are legally required to remove the software from any computers that no longer belong to your organization. Possible ramifications range from being charged for software on those computers to unwanted license audits to fines.

Environmental Impact

Replacing computers produces a tremendous amount of electronic waste (e-waste) that can end up in landfills, or be improperly disposed of, which can be hazardous or damaging to the environment.

Why proper disposal is important

It prevents data that has been saved to, or cached on, the computer from being stolen, resulting in a data breach.
It ensures you are not violating license agreements by leaving licensed software on computers you no longer own.
It keeps computer equipment out of the landfill by donating usable equipment to those in need and ensuring unusable hardware is recycled in the most environmentally responsible way.

How happier IT's End-of-Life service works

We erase all data securely, which prevents data from being recovered using data recovery software. This process can be initiated remotely to ensure data is protected during the device's transportation to happier IT. (this process requires the computer to be powered on for several hours)
We remove hard drives from the computer, which are then picked up and destroyed by our partner Iron Mountain.
We then donate the computer to our partners, such as the Electronics Recycling Association (ERA), a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing electronic waste through the reuse and recycling of unwanted computers.

happier IT includes End-of-Life services

If you are already a happier IT client, you can begin taking advantage of our end-of-life service right away. We believe a proper end-of-life process is essential for every organization, so we include our end-of-life service in all of our Managed Service plans.

If you're not yet a happier IT client and would like to learn more about happpier IT and our services, please click the link below to talk to a happier IT advisor.