Managing assets — wherever they reside in a business — is critical to ensuring financial success and sustaining operations. Asset management ensures that your company can optimize the use of its assets, which increases the likelihood of meeting your projections, and your ability to manage risk proactively. Failure to properly manage assets increases the potential for financial losses, including a cyberattack via an unprotected IT asset.

IT asset tracking covers tangible assets, such as desktops, laptops, mobile devices, servers, and routers, as well as intangible assets, such as proprietary software. Trade secrets, which can include product design specifications, financial plans, models, and marketing databases are also categorized as intangible assets, and would be included in the IT asset management process.

This article breaks down how asset tracking can help protect those assets, with step-by-step guidance for adopting an IT asset management solution. These steps include:

1. Identifying assets.
2. Documenting expectations.
3. Identifying stakeholders.
4. Evaluating third-party providers.
5. Tracking your assets.

Controlling your company’s assets is critical to competing in the marketplace. Most companies can further benefit from adopting compliance management software to improve the visibility and control of their assets. Within a compliance management system, your centralized inventory of IT assets can then be mapped to relevant frameworks and controls at your organization.