Asset Retention
It may be tempting to keep assets indefinitely, but there are security ramifications to be considered. For example, most organizations lease their laptops/desktops for between 18 and 36 months. After that lease expires, they can either return them or keep them at no additional cost. Again, the temptation might be to extract additional value from such assets, even though they have been completely amortized off of the books. Value can be extracted just by putting them in storage as emergency spares or perhaps by selling them as used equipment. But both options come with risks to the organization.
Consider the first option—keeping them as emergency spares in storage. Suppose one day somebody’s machine breaks and they need a quick replacement. Depending on how old the machine is, it may not be able to run modern software. In this case, you have kept one or several hundred machines around for nothing. It is always recommended to use new machines because...
