Cisco Background check

slinuxuzer

Does anyone know how I can check into the history of a cisco switch or router, trace ownership, see if it was stolen etc?

Netstudent

Here is an article that explains how Cisco's warranties and SLA's are affected by theft. I'm not sure about tracing ownership, but I do know that cisco has a database of reported stolen equipment. I would call their corp. headquarters and I'm sure they can point you in the right direction.

If you buy from secondary reseller, it makes it very difficult to track. The gear can pass through several brokers hands before it gets to the reseller or even you. Gear can also be hard to track because a lot of big companies don't like to report that they have experienced a serious security breach. If that were to go public, they could lose their credibility and lose trust from their parters. So there are a lot of variables that come into play here.

http://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/products/products/c1243/cdccont_0900aecd8013f23e.pdf