IT Asset Disposition — Verified, Compared, Connected
We verify certifications, compare capabilities, and connect IT leaders with disposition vendors they can actually trust. We are paid the same no matter which vendor you choose.
The reality
The closet
Somewhere in your facility there is a storage room with retired laptops stacked against the wall. Nobody is sure how long they've been there. Nobody has checked whether they were wiped. Nobody has a record of the serial numbers. When an auditor or a regulator asks about the disposition of assets in that room, you will not have a good answer. That's not an ITAD problem — it's a documentation problem that ITAD is supposed to prevent.
The audit
Your ITAD vendor gave you certificates of destruction. You filed them. Six months later, during a HIPAA audit, the auditor asks for the chain-of-custody documentation showing how the drives were handled between pickup and destruction. The certificates show the end state. They don't show the middle. Your vendor's contract doesn't mention chain of custody. You are now explaining a gap that your vendor was supposed to close.
The eBay listing
A server that left your data center turns up on eBay. The seller doesn't know what's on the drives. They may not have checked. Your ITAD vendor processed thousands of assets that quarter and can't confirm whether that specific device went through their certified destruction workflow or was sold for parts. The device has your company name stenciled on the side. The drives have not been wiped.
The platform
The directory
Research ITAD vendors by the specific credentials your compliance work requires. Every vendor is independently verified against third-party registries. Every credential carries a verification timestamp and a link to the issuing authority.
The exchange
Tell us what you need retired. We qualify the requirement — data-bearing device counts, the sanitization level, the evidence your auditor will ask for — then take it to verified vendors whose credentials and footprint fit. Where assets carry residual value, resale terms are quoted separately from the service price, so neither number can hide the other. Buyers pay us nothing.
Why this exists
Enterprise buyers need to dispose of retired IT hardware compliantly. They need vendors who can demonstrate proper destruction, defensible chain of custody, environmental compliance, and reasonable value recovery.
The industry hasn't made this easy. Vendors are structurally incentivized to oversell their compliance posture. Trade press depends on vendor advertising. Research firms charge fees that price out routine procurement. Trade associations operate as membership directories rather than verification bodies.
The result is procurement-by-vendor-sales-call. The cost is incidents like Morgan Stanley’s, where $161.5 million in penalties and settlements across four separate proceedings arose from the same IT asset disposal failures — an extreme case, but symptomatic.
Morgan Stanley entities, arising from the decommissioning of Wealth Management data centers.
| Proceeding | Year | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| OCC civil money penaltyMorgan Stanley Bank, N.A. and Morgan Stanley Private Bank, N.A. · OCC news release 2020-134 | 2020 | $60M |
| Class action settlementMorgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC (S.D.N.Y., No. 1:20-cv-05914) · Final approval, 5 Aug 2022 | 2022 | $60M |
| SEC enforcement actionMorgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC · SEC press release 2022-168 | 2022 | $35M |
| Multistate AG settlementMorgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC · N.Y. Attorney General, Nov 2023 | 2023 | $6.5M |
| Total | $161.5M |
Compare ITAD’s aggregation across four separate proceedings. Three are regulatory or law-enforcement actions; one is a private class-action settlement. Each row links to its source.
Compare ITAD is structurally outside this dynamic. We don’t sell ITAD services, we don’t own facilities, and we never take custody of an asset. Vendors pay us to be verified and on business that closes — never for placement, coverage, or a passing result. We verify against third-party registries and publish what we find.
Inside an exchange transaction
A Fortune 500 enterprise had four thousand GPUs to decommission. The walkthrough below shows how that requirement moves through the RFP Exchange — structured RFP, verified-vendor credential comparison, inspection, and a certificate of destruction with a single audit trail.
The ITAD Brief
The Morgan Stanley data breach is the most-cited cautionary tale in IT asset disposition. The SEC's order tells a different story from the one the industry repeats — and the real one is worse.
Explore secure media destruction techniques for diverse media types including tapes, SSDs, and mobile devices to protect your sensitive data effectively.
Master the data center decommissioning process with this comprehensive guide covering planning, execution, and best practices for success.
The exchange
The RFP Exchange runs manually today. We qualify a requirement, take it to verified vendors, and make the quotes comparable ourselves. The software that does this without us in the middle — structured bid and ask, settlement terms, and listings for servers, networking, storage, and end-user devices from verified sellers — is in build.
When it opens, every listing will carry the seller's verification status, credentials, and chain-of-custody documentation. Payment handling and dispute resolution are part of that build. They are not features running today, and we would rather say so than let you find out.
If you're a verified vendor interested in participating, contact our editorial team. If you're a buyer, sign up and we'll tell you when it opens.
Methodology
The Compare ITAD Verification Standard defines exactly what we check, how we check it, and what each credential signals. Three layers.
Base Verification. Every vendor in the directory holds a current R2v3, e-Stewards, or NAID AAA certification, verified against the issuing authority's public registry. No exceptions, no provisional status.
The Credential Catalog. Twenty-four credentials across certifications, regulatory frameworks, operational capabilities, and industry experience markers. Each entry defines how we verify it and what it signals to buyers.
Vendor Classifications. Verified, Verified RI (Regulated Industries), and Verified CI (Critical Infrastructure) as summary descriptions for vendors who meet additional criteria.
The standard is versioned. Material changes are logged. Every claim on every vendor profile carries source attribution and a timestamp.
