Emotions aside, whenever an employee is fired or quits, their departure means extra paperwork for Human Resources. After the farewell cake has been cleaned up, the exit interview has been completed, and all the resignation forms have been filed, it is now vital that the former employee’s access to the company’s network be completely removed.
By removing every network access point attached to a former employee, you are preventing them from stealing company files or even sabotaging your system in case they are disgruntled. In a surprising employee survey by Cyber-Ark, almost half of the employees interviewed admitted that if they were fired tomorrow, then they would walk out with their former company’s proprietary data. This is blatant theft and it includes important company information like databases, password lists, financial reports, and R&D plans.
Think about it, out of every employee that is currently part of your team (members of your company “family”), almost half would walk out with a thumb drive full of sensitive data if they were fired tomorrow. We are not trying to sow the seeds of mistrust; we are only trying to bring awareness to a large security issue this is too often overlooked. Closing every network access point is the only way that you can make sure that your data will remain safe whenever an employee is terminated.
This security issue becomes more complicated if the former employee had a lot of responsibility. If the former high-level employee had purchasing power on behalf of your company, then turning over the corporate credit card is only part of the termination process. You will also have to notify suppliers that this person no longer has purchasing authority, and change passwords and login information to all of the online accounts they had access to. Basically, the more responsible an employee was, the more network clean up you will have to perform.
In the same way that you would call a professional locksmith to change out the locks to your front door, it is also important to have a professional IT company plug the holes to your network. Think Tank NTG can review every access point to your network and make sure that only those currently employed have access. To make the termination process go more smoothly, we can even perform this service remotely. This makes it so that all you need to do is notify us that a certain employee has been let go, and we will take care of the rest. Call Think Tank NTG at 800-501-DATA and keep your company’s valuable information in the confines of your company.