Teqtivity Analysis: Ghost Assets Drain Millions Annually From Enterprise IT Budgets, New Report Finds

New report finds that inventory drift is a management failure, not a clerical one — with real consequences for security, spending, and regulatory readiness

LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, April 15, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Teqtivity, an IT asset management platform serving enterprises globally, today released its 2026 Q1 IT Asset Intelligence Report, "The Ghost Asset Crisis: How Inventory Drift Is Reshaping IT Governance." The report draws on publicly available industry research to examine how the gap between asset records and what's actually in the field is widening — and what that gap is costing organisations.

The findings arrive as global IT spending is projected to reach $6.15 trillion in 2026, a 10.8% increase year-over-year. Yet across many of the organisations Teqtivity works with, a basic operational question still goes unanswered: what devices do we actually have, who has them, and where are they right now?
Hiren Hasmukh, Founder and CEO of Teqtivity, says the pattern is consistent: "We hear some version of that question in almost every conversation we have with IT leaders. The spending keeps going up. The complexity keeps going up. But the ability to answer simple questions about your own environment hasn't kept pace."

The Ghost Asset Problem
The report identifies "ghost assets" — devices still listed in records but no longer in verified custody — as a management problem, not a data entry one. They accumulate through normal business activity: fast hiring, role changes, gaps in offboarding, and refresh cycles where old devices are never formally retired.
In an organisation handling 2,000 device transactions a month, that creates roughly 24,000 chances per year for records and reality to drift apart.

The financial cost is real. Conservative modelling based on direct observations across customer environments finds that a 7% accuracy gap in a 10,000-device organisation produces between $2 million and $5 million in annual losses — through buying devices you already have, paying for hardware sitting unused, misallocating software licences, and planning refreshes on bad data.

The security risk is equally significant. The average global data breach costs $4.44 million, according to IBM and the Ponemon Institute. And 71% of HR professionals report that at least one departing employee did not return their company device. Every device that doesn't come back is an endpoint no one controls — holding credentials, active sessions, and years of access history.

Hasmukh puts it plainly: "Most organisations treat ghost assets like an inventory problem. It's not. It's an access problem. A device that never came back is an endpoint you can't account for. You can't secure what you can't account for."

Evidence From the Field
The report draws on findings from Teqtivity customer environments to show the scale of recoverable value. In one large enterprise engagement, fixing lifecycle gaps and clearing inventory blind spots surfaced excess devices, improved retrieval rates, and reduced unnecessary procurement — resulting in $4 million in operational savings.

Three Things Making it Worse in 2026
The report identifies three forces compounding the problem this year: more technology being deployed faster, remote and hybrid work becoming the default rather than the exception, and compliance requirements that now demand device-level records — not just policy documents. Each is manageable on its own. Together, they leave no room for guesswork. For organisations operating under GDPR, DORA, and FCA frameworks, the ability to demonstrate verified device custody is no longer optional — and the report's findings on lifecycle evidence directly support that compliance posture.

Industry Signals: The Problem Spans Every Sector
The report maps how this pattern plays out across industries. In healthcare, where average breach costs are significant and devices operate under strict regulatory mandates, untracked equipment creates direct compliance exposure. In financial services, identity-dense environments and constant regulatory scrutiny make device-to-user validation a governance necessity. In technology and SaaS companies, high turnover and remote onboarding accelerate ghost asset accumulation. The report finds that while the consequences vary by sector, the structural pattern is consistent: devices move faster than records are updated, and governance maturity has not kept pace.

How Organisations are Responding
The report identifies three approaches emerging across industries. Some organisations are adding more monitoring tools. Others are running periodic audits and cleanup initiatives. A third group is building accountability directly into the moments when devices move — when someone is hired, changes roles, leaves the company, or when hardware is retired. The first two approaches tend to work temporarily before drift returns. The third changes the conditions that cause it in the first place.

"You can add more monitoring. You can do another audit. But if the process that governs how a device moves through your organisation isn't structured, the gap keeps coming back," said Hasmukh. "We built Teqtivity to fix that at the process level."

What to Watch in Q2 2026
The report closes with two predictions. Ghost asset risk will grow fastest in organisations with large contractor populations or distributed teams, where device movement is high and governance hasn't caught up. Inventory drift will also surface more frequently during audits, as auditors begin requesting device-level custody records that most existing systems cannot easily provide — creating particular pressure in regulated European markets where lifecycle evidence is increasingly expected as standard.

The full 2026 Q1 IT Asset Intelligence Report is available at www.teqtivity.com/teqtivity-it-asset-intelligence-report-q1-2026/

About Teqtivity
Teqtivity is an IT asset management platform built to help organisations stay in control of their technology environments as they grow. By centralising asset records and building accountability into how devices move through an organisation, the platform helps teams maintain visibility and reliable data across distributed workforces and large device estates. Teqtivity is designed to scale without adding complexity — unlimited asset tracking and full platform features from day one. Learn more at www.teqtivity.com.

Rishi Simbudyal
Teqtivity, Inc
hello@teqtivity.com
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
Facebook
X

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.