Employee Abruptly Quits: Protect Your Business First
Employee offboarding is one of the most challenging tasks, especially when they leave involuntarily. Even with established HR policies, there are cases when employees quit without following any protocols. At the time of leaving, they still have access to various functions of your business. They can access financial records, clients’ contacts, CRM systems, and trade secrets stored within your computer system. It poses a considerable cybersecurity risk with slim chances of recovery.
There are various precautions you need to take to protect your business first. The risk of a former employee engaging in fraudulent activities that lead to data breaches and confidentiality issues is massive. Wall Street Journal Pro Research Survey found out that 67% of the 400 under research companies showed concerns about their malicious employees. Quitting abruptly means these employees are dissatisfied with their employment and may try to jeopardize your cybersecurity. Let’s dive in to check what you can do to keep yourself safe.
Actions to Carry Out After an Employee Exit
It is essential to consult your IT service manager if the employee quits immediately. This helps to carry out these actions as soon as possible. Without immediate action, you may be too late to protect your business. Your IT service provider will help you with the following critical processes:
- Disable Multi-factor authentication (MFA): this is one of the most crucial aspects of cybersecurity. Intruders can access any shared drive and files when they find access. If the employee had access to your MFA, then you need to disable it immediately. The MFA is responsible for securing your system with third parties and organizations while controlling who can access your business files. With disabling, you deny any access to your files.
- Email access: change the password to the emails to ensure the former employee doesn’t have it. They should not view, send, or receive an email from your clients or any stakeholders. Anyone can use the platform to manipulate others and cause havoc in company processes. You can also backup every information you need if you suspect legal action against the company.
- Disable all cloud accounts: your company data is accessible from anywhere if you operate in the cloud. Anytime the employee leaves the office, they can get into the cloud and get hold of your highly sensitive information. You can avoid this by disabling your cloud account, moving all the files to another user, and deleting the account.
- Remove access to Active Directory and 365 groups and memberships: remove their access to any systems accounts relating to VPN/remote access, applications accounts, company-owned social media accounts, and financial accounts. You don’t want access that allows the former employee to check company details or post information online using the company accounts.
- Try to recover business equipment: when the employee goes away, you can take back the business laptops, software license designations, any external storage devices, and cell phones. They can also use these to access your files. If you can recover any of these devices, continue to disable them from accessing your business network.
- Wipe company information: it is possible to remotely remove all company information from your former employee’s mobile phones and home desktops. If you suspect they could try to access their accounts from their home networks, remove them from the systems and take down any data from the company within its systems.
- Disable access to voicemail: listening to phone calls can be a major catastrophe for business. Since most businesses authenticate user devices to take voicemail when attending to clients, your former employee may still have access to the voicemail and forwarded phone calls. It would be best if you terminated it as soon as they walked out of the company doors.
- Revoke building access: as you deal with cloud and file systems, don’t forget your physical servers or the need to secure your business premises. If the employee stormed off with their key card access, they could come back and vandalize your business. Disable and change your company door access codes and revoke the employee’s user ID and password from accessing the building.
- Carry out an audit on the employee account activities: this is essential before deleting the employee accounts. It would help if you were sure they had not copied company files into external drives or accessed unauthorized data using their accounts. Check if they tried installing unapproved software and if they connected any new or malicious devices through their accounts. After confirmation, you can delete the account permanently.
- Communicate with other employees: in a company with numerous employees, the word may not spread fast to reach others in the same organization, more so those working in different departments. Without proper communication, they may get duped by the former employee into giving company information without their knowledge. After all, it is their colleague, and they won’t know that they have already quit.
- Plan for security breach response: after carrying out all the necessary security protocols, it’s time to prepare for any risks. Implement a robust security policy that should include if any breach occurs. The policy should stop breaches, mitigate damage, and correct problems as soon as possible. Early assessment and investigation will enable you to have enough evidence when needed and help you get back to your feet after a breach.
Carrying out these processes is not easy. It would help if you had time, skills, equipment, and expertise to enable fast processes. For these reasons, you need to have the best computer-managed services that will keep your business safe when you have such a security threat.
Manage Your Business Security Threat with OnPar Technologies
At OnPar Technologies, we enable you to be proactive in protecting your business systems, network, and data from any former employee of intruders. We help businesses to have robust network security through thorough assessments to identify any vulnerabilities and correct them with the best possible solutions.
We have a team of trained professionals who will always be ready on the call to assist you. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation and find out more about how we can help secure your business.
