Lesson 1: Assets

Concerns with Hardware Assets: Availability and Support

Any accountant will tell you that hardware assets are generally considered depreciable assets. What this means, from an information security standpoint, is that hardware assets have a limited life span before they need to be replaced or upgraded.

However, often when organizations invest a significant amount of money into their hardware assets—and into the training required for personnel to keep these assets running—they are reluctant to upgrade these assets. It could be that they have developed a proprietary or legacy software environment that would be costly to update, or it could be that the retraining required would be overwhelming.

Whatever the reason, many organizations find themselves with older systems that may or may not be supported by the original manufacturers. This, of course, means that replacement parts and documentation may not be available, an important security concern.