On March 2, Amazon made tech headlines with a large outage resulting from a simple human error. Major sites on the internet were taken down hours after an employee took more servers offline than was intended while debugging a billing issue. As a result, two additional subsystems went down, the product of a domino effect.Amazon has said it’s taking measures to prevent this type of error from occurring in the future and to safeguard its network. However, it’s a prime example of how easily a simple mistake can screw up an entire web of systems and cause widespread outages. Such a phenomenon can cause significant damage to a company, its relationship with clients, and an entire customer base.

Data center decommissioning is risky business

Error is especially important to avoid during a data center decommission. The process is complex, and mitigating risk is always a factor in which vendor should perform a decommission. The pressure is high to find a vendor with a secure data destruction process to ensure compliance. It’s also critical to ensure the decommission itself goes smoothly and avoids human errors like Amazon’s.It’s easy to make a mistake, even for an experienced professional. However, small slip-ups can lead to massive errors that impacts thousands of users and damage reputations. An error is nothing to take lightly, which makes it vital to ensure that your ITAD specialists are experts.Fortunately, there are ways to select an ITAD specialist to eliminate the risk of careless errors. One way is to ensure the ITAD vendor you work with is R2 certified and employs additional measures. This includes white glove service, a secure chain of custody, and thorough data destruction. These measures protect your security and demonstrate that the vendor goes above and beyond for every client. They will facilitate a more thorough, careful process when decommissioning intricate data center systems and remove the likelihood of an error.

Knowledge is power

A reliable ITAD vendor will have non-negligible criteria like certification, security, and data destruction. Growing a solid, repeat working relationship with the vendor helps eliminate the potential for error altogether. Working with a vendor on a repeat basis enables the team of specialists to develop full knowledge of your data center setup and network.