is it rare the decommissioned machines are given back to the employee after cleanup?

Depends on how the computers were procured. Leasing deals won’t allow that, for instance.

My org insists that the disks of all obsolete machines are destroyed and the rest of the hardware sent for disposal. I have a few systems that could be wiped and given away for charity but that’s not allowed. This seems incredibly wasteful to me.

seems a lot of orgs work on cargo-cult knowledge

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/56891586200393318... (2015)

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/11917713453627965... (2019)

i think swift had another post about it a bit more recently but i cannot find it now

if you encrypt the disk at the os level, you only need to throw away the keys, ie: reformat the drive. no need to physically erase as what is store is just noise once the keys are gone.

Thanks for the links. I wonder if it’s entirely that, or if management fears that staff might somehow gain a benefit by taking obsolete hardware.

There’s a temptation that is removed by destroying or selling to a liquidator - and it removes any chance of apparent favoritism: Steve got to take home that twelve CPU rack mount and I just got an old mouse.

But even more common in large companies is that it’s all on leases and goes back to the leasing company to be liquidated on eBay; you can always find miles of three or five year old gear there.

ebay being the access normaliser to this equipment doesn't sound too bad

it substitutes the internal network/hierarchy bias for a mostly monetary one

maybe there's no point for us to argue over the decisions of management