A 5-Step Checklist to Avoid Employee Sabotage

Do you know what would happen if your business were to lose a key member of its operational personnel? In some cases, it can be heartbreaking to see a good worker leave, but sometimes the one leaving doesn’t depart under the greatest circumstances. Are you confident that any angry employees leaving your organization won’t be able to access your infrastructure?

If you take the proper steps when escorting your former employees out the door, you won’t have to worry about them causing any trouble when they leave. It’s just a matter of making sure that they have no way of accessing your infrastructure after they leave your company. Many companies find that they don’t have a solid exit process.

While the reasons might vary, a big part of it is that they don’t suspect malicious activity from their former coworkers. Employees unknowingly leaving the organization with sensitive information is often a major issue. If these employees get hacked, it could potentially be the same as if your company itself was the target. The best way to avoid employees walking off with corporate data is to take proper precautions, starting before they walk out your door.

Step #1: Exit Interview
An exit interview is a great place to discuss why an employee is leaving your company, and it’s a great opportunity to catch up on all of the important details about the employee’s employment termination. What accounts do they have access to? What devices have they borrowed from the company? Do they have important confidential documents that need to be turned in? How can they be contacted after leaving the company? These are all important questions that need to be asked, and the employee’s answers will help determine your next steps.

Step #2: Acquire Borrowed Devices
If your employee has decided to leave the company, you need to make sure you get any company devices back from them before they’re gone for good. This includes laptops, mobile devices, and storage devices, like USB or hard drives. This helps to minimize your data’s exposure to external, unprotected environments.

Step #3: Revoke Email and Remote Access Credentials
We feel like we don’t need to mention this, since it should be fairly obvious, but you’d be surprised by how many former employees can still access their accounts following termination. You need to make sure that all email addresses and remote access accounts that might allow your former employee to access your infrastructure, are promptly altered. This helps to ensure that they don’t get any ideas for sharing your confidential data, or worse. Just make sure you don’t delete them completely, just in case you need to check archived messages for some reason.

Step #4: Change All Relevant Passwords
This is another no-brainer. Any passwords used by the exiting employee need to be changed in order to keep him or her out of your IT infrastructure. This is especially important if the employee has the passwords saved in their mobile device’s browser cache, or if they use a password manager. This keeps passwords out of the employee’s hands, and away from hackers who might compromise the devices.

Step #5: Notify Your IT Department
As always, you need to keep IT in the loop so they can keep an eye out for any suspicious activity concerning the former employee. In fact, your IT should be entirely involved in the exit process to ensure that no stones are left unturned.

Many of these steps are common-sensical, but some businesses still fail to implement a process like this. While some are simply neglectful, others don’t have the resources to ensure this process is followed to a T. One solution is to contact Computerware, who can help you make sure that all fronts are covered in the event an employee leaves your business. Give us a call at (703) 821-8200 to learn more.