Unlocked Drives Drive Financial and Sustainability Gains

With data breaches having become a regular occurrence, there are obvious benefits to encrypting and protecting your IT devices and the sensitive data they hold. In fact, the latest IBM Data Breach Report revealed that 83% of organizations experienced more than one data breach during the past year, and the global cost of a data breach in 2023 averaged $4.4 million. When the penalties, costs and consequences are this high, corporations are right to encrypt and secure their data.

A locked or encrypted hard drive obviously provides the data security that is so vital to a company’s financial well-being and brand reputation. But what happens when drives with substantial remarketing value are left encrypted at the end of their first life? Encryption protects sensitive data from being accessed. However, being denied access to the data, means that it cannot be properly destroyed. This prevents drives from being safely redeployed and used a second time and leaves only one option: they must be physically destroyed. Even if they are in perfect working condition, locked devices are shredded, crushed or pulverized.

Hard drive destruction eliminates a multitude of benefits that can be realized by redeploying and reusing an unlocked erased device. Proper data erasure to industry standards renders devices perfectly safe for a second life, assuring your company complete peace of mind. Once assets are securely and compliantly wiped of all data, your company is positioned to capitalize on the biggest advantages to be realized during asset disposition: financial return and corporate sustainability gains.

Remarketing of unlocked and erased drives maximizes a company’s return on investment and can greatly help to offset the cost of the new technology. IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) programs have the potential to be financially positive and qualified vendors have vast experience reselling redundant equipment with substantial value return.

In addition to revenue return, the environmental benefits of redeploying a used (and unlocked) asset may be greater than you may realize. Reuse is by far is the most sustainable solution for your retired assets. Giving your electronics a second life eliminates the need to extract finite virgin resources and avoids the carbon emissions that are associated with the production of a new component, including mining, transportation and processing. Manufacturing a new hard drive from recycled material, for example, produces more than twice the carbon than refurbishing a used one.

You will reduce your carbon footprint, but redeploying unlocked assets provides companies with the added bonus of reporting these environmental benefits. Lower Scope 3 emissions contribute not only to overall corporate sustainability goals, but to a corporation’s environmental reporting requirements. This is especially important as government requirements are becoming more stringent worldwide.

Verifying all your storage devices are unencrypted and prepared for data destruction will ensure complete data security, maximum value return, and a commitment to the circular economy through resource conservation, energy savings and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Sims Lifecycle Services (SLS) is a world leader in sustainable ITAD services. Last year we repurposed 3.8 million electronic units, resulting in 755 kilotons of carbon avoided, enough to power over 91,000 homes for a full year. We provide industry-best sustainable and revenue positive ITAD solutions for the world’s largest corporations and data centers.