Chain of Custody

Also: custody trail, asset custody

Chain of custody is the documented trail of possession for an asset: who checked it out, when it moved, who signed at each transfer, and when it came back. The practice comes from evidence handling and applies wherever gear is valuable, regulated, or shared: radios, scanners, vehicles, tools, medical kits. A broken chain is how a two-thousand-dollar radio disappears with nobody accountable. In the Atlas ecosystem, custody events are logged per asset as scans and signatures, so every transfer writes a journal row and the current holder is answerable in one query.

Last updated June 18, 2026