ASTM International Committee E53 on Property Management Systems has begun developing new standards to address the beginning of a challenging new era for asset managers – the era of lost laptops. Understanding how organizations reached this point – where entities are losing an increasing number of sensitive assets such as computers, some with sensitive information stored in the memory devices – is a multifaceted task, but is critical to forming solutions that will ensure fewer losses and without delay.

“Our objective is to establish standards that will define methodologies to identify sensitive assets, categorize the risk associated with each asset type, and based on the risk category, offer guidance on process activities such as the level of resources that an organization might expend on protecting sensitive assets,” says Jerry Hanley, subcommittee chair of Committee E53.

The volume of mobile information technology (IT) assets that is entering organizational inventories is growing at an incredible rate and is redefining how the property management profession is managing organizational inventories. Compounding the problem is the fact that IT assets are much smaller, cheaper and easier to acquire. The new ASTM standards will help organizations implement processes to identify and control sensitive assets such as IT through its life cycle.

Today, protecting IT assets is a top priority for organizational leadership because it is now recognized that failure to do so can result in litigation, loss of proprietary or sensitive information, and violation of statutory or regulatory requirements.  Perhaps most importantly, lost IT assets containing sensitive information can impact national security.  The sense of urgency is evident and ASTM Committee E53 aims to proactively respond to this challenge.

 For further technical information, contact Jerry Hanley, U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, D.C. (phone: 202/287-1563; jerry.hanley@hq.doe.gov). For membership or meeting information, contact Christi Sierk, Technical Committee Operations, ASTM International (phone: 610/832-9728; csierk@astm.org).

Release #7760