Offboarding risks that compromise IT security

 

Organizations often overlook the process of offboarding due to which security is often compromised. Reason being, when an employee departs from the company, they take more than just the knowledge along with them. The Data. It is a well known fact that almost 60% of the employees save work documents before they leave their job. Employees usually that had left the company on a bad note are most likely to engage in such nefarious activities. Infact, a survey said, 70% of the intellectual property is misused within 90 days of the resignation. Then be it your customer lists, blueprints or internal documents, everything your previous employee has access to, is deemed to be compromised. If the companies are not careful in deactivating the accounts of their previous employees or offboarding them entirely, the unrevoked access can pose significant risks. 

Risks of poor offboarding process

Improperly off boarded employees are a major threat to companies. Here are some of the security risks that are directly linked to poor offboarding:

Loss of data

One of the common issues encountered by organizations is data breach. Unsatisfied employees who leave organizations often steal data and use it in the competitor’s companies. It can lead to loss of crucial information and marrs your competitive edge.

Loss of Reputation 

Data breaches affect consumer perception. When data is lost from an organization, it gives a poor image of the company’s security controls; and clients refrain from trusting such companies for future collaboration. 

Compliance violation

Compliance laws for data security are stringent and if there is any sort of data loss from the system, clients can file lawsuits against the company. This might land you into huge penalties and fines. 

Loss of productivity 

Loss of data leads to loss of skills if the documentation isn’t done properly. So to say, when an employee departs from the organization, they take away the knowledge. If that knowledge is not documented somewhere, the company ends up having ineffective processes and strategies. 

Unused licenses increase spending 

A company can experience alarming financial loss in case the licenses used during their tenure are no more useful, but active. Renewal of licenses that are not required anymore once the employee leaves, can cause heavy cash loss. 

How to counter security risks?

Though security breach is an inevitable factor in any business, its mitigation is incumbent to keep your operations fruitful and devoid of any risks. Here are some counter measures to take:

Rest all passwords and revoke network access

Take into consideration the important files with employee access. You must revoke all the access to such documents that have critical data. It is essential to prevent any kind of access to the outside resource. 

Central cloud repository 

Move all your critical data to a centralized cloud storage and restrict access to only a few important people in the organization. Make sure that the permissions are correctly set. 

Proper exit interview

Exit interviews are essential for departing employees and will help identify red flags. Ensure that the company restricts access to data and credit cards when the employee leaves the organization.

Documented Procedure 

Documentation of all the onboarding and offboarding procedures is imperative. Penning down each and every step of the process helps you in not missing out anything which can eventually lead to security breach. 

Offboarding checklist you must keep in mind 

Offboarding is such an important process that you must not have any loose ends while offboarding an employee. Here is a checklist that could be of help:

• Deactivation of productivity tools 
• Deactivation of CRM tools 
• Cloud infrastructure 
• Device access
• File shares
• Corporate networks like: radius, VPN, WPA2

Conclusion 

Cybersecurity is the foremost thing that must be kept in mind while offboarding an employee. Having a streamlined process and well-stated policies can eliminate the risks of security issues. Hence, follow the offboarding best practices diligently to enhance and sustain your security by multifold.