The massive wave of layoffs in 2024 brings a cybersecurity threat that most business owners aren’t focusing on: offboarding employees. Even major brands that you would expect to have top-of-the-line cybersecurity systems, processes, and procedures in place fail to protect themselves from insider threats adequately. This August marks a year since two disgruntled Tesla employees went rogue after being let go, exposing the personal information—including names, addresses, phone numbers, and even Social Security numbers—of over 75,000 employees.
The offboarding challenge is not showing any signs of abating. According to NerdWallet, as of May 24, 2024, 298 US-based tech companies had laid off 84,600 workers, with the numbers continuing to rise. This trend is not limited to smaller tech start-ups but includes significant layoffs at tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. The first quarter of 2024 alone saw the elimination of around 257,254 jobs, indicating a worsening situation.
Regardless of your current staffing plans, implementing a robust offboarding process is non-negotiable for every business, regardless of size. It's not just a routine administrative task; it's a vital security measure. Failing to revoke access for former employees can lead to severe business and legal consequences in the future.
Some of those issues include:
- Theft Of Intellectual Property: Employees can sneak away with YOUR company’s files, client data, and confidential information stored on personal devices, as well as retain access to cloud-based applications like social media sites and file-sharing sites (Dropbox or OneDrive, for example) that your IT department doesn’t know about or forgets to change the password to. A study by Osterman Research revealed that 69% of businesses experience data loss due to employee turnover, and 87% of employees who leave take data with them. The information you worked hard to gather is sold to competitors and used by them when hired by the competition or by the former employee to BECOME a competitor. This kind of data theft can have devastating consequences for your business.
- Compliance Violations: Failing to revoke access privileges and removing employees from authorized user lists can register you as non-compliant in heavily regulated industries. This simple mistake can result in significant fines, hefty penalties, and, in some cases, legal consequences.
- Data Destruction: Employees who feel unfairly laid-off and retain access to their accounts could quickly delete ALL their e-mails and any critical files they can access. If that data isn’t backed up, you will lose it ALL. And for those thinking, “I’ll sue them!” Rightfully so, but even if you do sue them and win, the hard reality is that the legal costs, time wasted on the lawsuit and recovering the data, plus the aggravation and distraction of dealing with it all, are higher costs than what you might get awarded if you win the lawsuit and might collect in damages.
- Data Breach: This could be the most terrifying of all. Unhappy employees who feel they have been wronged can make you the star of the following devastating data breach headline and incur a costly lawsuit to go with it. It could be as simple as making one click and downloading, exposing, or modifying your clients’ or employees’ private information, financial records, or even trade secrets.
Do you have an airtight offboarding process to curb these risks? Chances are you don’t. A 2024 study by Wing revealed that one out of five organizations have indications that some former users were not correctly offboarded, including those astute enough to detect it.
How DO you properly offboard an employee?
- Implement The Principle of Least Privilege: Successful offboarding starts with proper onboarding. New employees should ONLY be given access to the files and programs they need to do their jobs, and this should be meticulously documented to make offboarding easier.
- Leverage Automation: Your IT team can help use automation to streamline revoking access to multiple software applications simultaneously, saving time and resources while reducing the likelihood of manual errors.
- Implement Continuous Monitoring: You can implement software that tracks who is doing what and where on the company network. This can help you identify suspicious behavior by an unauthorized user and help you determine if a former employee retains access to private accounts.
These are only a few ways your IT team can help improve your offboarding process to make it more efficient and secure.
Insider threats can be devastating, and if you think this can’t happen to you, think again. You must be proactive in protecting your organization.
To find out if any gaps in your offboarding process expose you to theft or a data breach, our team will do a free, in-depth risk assessment to help you resolve it. Call us at 517-928-2436 or click here to book now.
