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How Device Diagnostics Show What Erasure Certificates Leave Out

Verified erasure answers the first question every retired device raises: is the data gone? A second question follows immediately. What condition is the device in? Device diagnostics answer it, and over the past year, our data revealed that 85% of diagnostic tests run on devices passed. The other 15% is where the most actionable information sits, because every failed test points to a specific cause, and that cause decides what should happen to the device next.

Blancco Certify combines erasure and diagnostics in one process, so every device produces a record of both. This post looks at what the failing 15% reveals, and why consistent data can matter as much as experienced judgment when many people, sites, and shifts assess the same kinds of devices. It also looks at what the 85% that passed shows: most retired devices still work as intended, and a recorded pass is evidence of it.

Kon Maragelis Head of Processing Product Marketing and Sales Success, Blancco

Kon Maragelis With over 30 years of experience in senior roles across telecommunications and reverse logistics, Kon Maragelis leads Blancco’s processing product marketing and sales success initiatives, setting the standard for asset processing solutions. Known for leveraging benchmarked reverse logistics solutions and patented process flows, Kon plays a key role in helping ITADs, carriers, retailers, and mobile businesses optimize their processes. A respected voice in the industry, he frequently speaks at global conferences, sharing insights on best practices and innovations in asset processing.

Erasure proves the data is gone. Diagnostics describe the device.

A digitally signed erasure certificate settles the security question for a device. It says nothing about whether the battery holds a charge, whether the storage is healthy, or whether the components inside are the ones the device shipped with.

Those details come from diagnostics. Run at the same point in the process as erasure, they add a second layer of evidence to the same audit trail. One pass verifies the device as clean and documents its condition at the same moment. Once both sit in one record, that certified data stops being a file to store and becomes something teams can ask questions of, automate around, and act on.

Where inconsistency enters the process

Most teams handling retired devices already run some form of assessment. The variation comes from how that assessment happens:

Each of these choices is reasonable on its own. Together they produce a process in which two identical devices receive two different assessments, and nobody can reconstruct why. Corporate IT teams see this when device records fail to match across locations. IT asset disposition providers and mobile processors see it when volume rises and judgment calls multiply.

The gap is rarely effort or expertise. The gap is the absence of a shared, objective baseline.

What the 15% reveals

The 15% figure comes from our internal diagnostics data, and each failed test in it is a data point with a cause. The causes differ. Some devices fail because components have worn out through normal use. Battery wear is the familiar example: a battery that no longer holds a charge is an expected result of age and a fair reason to adjust a device’s grade. Others fail because parts were replaced with non-original components somewhere in the device’s history. On mobile devices, Blancco’s parts authentication checks whether components such as the screen, battery, and camera are genuine Apple parts or third-party replacements.

Those two outcomes call for different responses, and they look identical without test data. A device with a degraded battery and a device with a swapped component can both present as “unreliable” to a technician working by inspection. Diagnostics separate wear from replaced parts and record which one the test found.

That distinction is the practical value of the 15%. Each failure arrives with a specific finding attached, which turns a vague concern into a documented fact.

The stakes are practical. Non-genuine parts lower a device’s grade, raise the risk of a return, and can trigger warnings for the end buyer. Misjudging condition costs money in the other direction, too. Blancco’s 2026 State of Data Sanitization Report, a survey of 1,460 IT, compliance, and sustainability leaders, found that 43% of mobile devices, 35% of laptops and desktop PCs, and 44% of data center assets were still fully functional when organizations destroyed them. A documented condition for every device gives teams evidence to act on instead of defaulting to destruction.

How data builds consistency

Consistency depends less on more experienced staff or more review than on three things being true of every device, at every site:

  1. Standardized tests. Every device runs the same tests against the same criteria, regardless of who operates the process.
  2. Recorded results. The system stores every outcome against the device’s serial number at the time of testing, and no result depends on memory or a handwritten note.
  3. A shared audit trail. Every site, team, and reviewer reads from the same record, which removes reconciliation work and disputed findings.

When these conditions hold, assessment becomes repeatable. A result produced in one location carries the same meaning in another, and a finding from last quarter can be checked against today’s.

A further benefit is how easily that record can be read. A single summary for each device, covering its identity, condition, and processing outcome, lets a reviewer answer “what happened to this device?” in seconds instead of piecing it together from separate reports. Tools that pull that history into one view, searchable by International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) or serial number, make the 15% that failed as easy to review as the 85% that passed.

One record for erasure & diagnostics

When evaluating data erasure tools with device grading and diagnostic features, the question worth asking is whether the erasure certificate and the diagnostic results end up in the same audit trail. In Blancco Certify, they do. A device that passes carries proof of both erasure and condition. A device that fails carries proof of erasure and a documented reason for the failure.

Blancco Blue builds on that record. Its secure, read-only AI connections let the AI tools your team already uses search and fetch your own reports and audit data, so your team can answer questions about a batch, a site, or a failure category from the source records.

See What Your Devices Are Telling You

Learn how Blancco Mobile Diagnostics & Erasure tests and erases devices in one process and gives every site the same evidence.

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