ITAD: An Effective Method of Brand Protection

In the words of Warren Buffett, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” To put this in business terms, you’ve spent many years building a successful business and a rock-solid reputation. Don’t let a lack of diligence with your IT assets put your business at risk. Implementing a solid ITAD plan for your end-of-life assets is an important step in maintaining your brand image and securing future success. When you implement an ITAD plan for your organization, you cover many important bases:

You protect your brand’s reputation.

Brand Protection

A data breach isn’t just monetarily costly. It can tarnish your brand’s image indefinitely.

“The reputational damage suffered by companies who fail to protect personal data can translate directly into a loss of business,” said Semafone CEO, Tim Critchley. And most companies can’t afford to ride out the damaging effects of a data breach. In 2019, the average cost of lost business due to data breaches was $1.42 million according to a study by IBM security.

Social media can be leveraged to grow your business, and it can also take your business down. When word of a data breach leaks into the public sphere, the court of public opinion passes harsh judgment and social shaming can grow into a monster your business can’t fight.

Fortunately, maintaining an ITAD plan is an effective safeguard against data breaches that can destroy your brand’s reputation.

You protect your brand from digital dumping.

Digital dumping is a widespread ethical and environmental problem in our world today. Illegal exportation of IT assets overseas to countries such as Hong Kong and Ghana under the pretense of “donations” is one way many U.S. exporters are wiping their hands of growing digital waste. In fact, in Ghana today, hundreds of millions of tons of digital waste is imported and dumped there each year, leaving locals to sort through it and salvage what they can. Sadly, this exposes Ghanianas to many toxins and dangerous working conditions.

It also opens the doors for criminals to purchase salvaged hard drives at open markets for around 35 American dollars, comb through for sensitive data, and leverage this data in scams. Savvy criminals have ready access to private financial data, credit card numbers and account information and can use bank numbers to empty the accounts of their unsuspecting overseas victims.

But digital dumping doesn’t just happen on foreign soil. In what could have easily turned into a PR nightmare, Hamline University computer monitors were discovered bobbing in Stearns County’s Rice Lake in 2006, over a decade after Hamline University paid a company to recycle them. Clearly a criminal act, lead, cadmium and mercury could easily have leached into the lake and killed marine life. Fortunately, Hamline acted quickly, owned up to the problem, hired a reputable ITAD company to properly recycle and discard the assets and paid the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency a $32,500 fine.

When asset tags are found where they should not be, your company looks careless and your brand image suffers, regardless of whether your data is compromised.

You make a social impact.

When you work with Tech Dump for your ITAD services, you provide corporate social responsibility departments with additional brand value because of our ability to quantify the impact of your retired IT assets through our Social Return on Investment work.

At a time when many of us are wondering how we can help show compassion and create equity within our communities, choosing a local, certified vendor, as opposed to an anonymous profit-driven entity, is an excellent way to contribute!

Job Training

Each year, we provide hundreds of thousands of employment hours and nearly a million dollars in wages as well as practical experience for adults facing barriers to employment, preparing them to be more valuable employees with expanding futures. Many individuals have experience in the justice system or are in recovery from addiction. Our impact includes extensive job training that leads to living-wage employment, responsible electronics recycling and refurbishing that lessens the harmful effects of pollution in our environment and refurbished electronics that make technology affordable for our community.

Also, consider as a company adopting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into your corporate social responsibility reports and work to achieve “a better and more sustainable future for all.”

ITAD is an important part of any business. Would you like to learn more about Tech Dump and how we can help protect your brand with an ITAD program that meets your company’s needs? Reach out to us at 763-432-3117 to learn more!