Your Ex-Employees could pose a huge security risk to your company

Sep 12, 2017 | Security-GRC | 0 comments

Employees with a vengeance are often a reality when it comes to letting people go, having mass lay-offs, or just when the employee-employer relationship doesn’t fit anymore.

A negative act can be as simple and common as a nasty review on Glassdoor. But what if your ex-employees had a more damaging plan in mind? Enter a world where employees have access to tons of different databases… and your data in them. If not de-provisioned, a vengeful employee could wreak havoc on the entire company.

To put things in perspective, a recent study conducted by OneLogin found 50% of ex-employees still have access to company databases. This same report also concludes 20% of businesses have experienced data breaches by former employees, and nearly half claim that more than 10% of all data breaches are the direct impact of former staff.

With all of the other potential ways hackers can steal your data, why worry about a low hanging fruit you could have taken care of when your former employee left? Easier said than done. If a former employee was in deep with your company they could potentially have access to almost all of your systems. It’s an easy task to de-provision them but could be time consuming. But it must be done!

Here are some simple steps you can take to ensure your company is safe from bitter ex-employees:

  1. Ensure all equipment, software, and non-consumable items purchased by your company is returned.
  2. Building, gate keys and corporate cards should be returned
  3. Keep track of your user roles, responsibilities and access rights

The best way to handle it may be to automate. The Single Sign On platforms we recommend to clients offer user provisioning. That makes it easy to ensure you don’t miss key systems.

If you’re interested in hearing more, give us a call! We’re happy to help in any way we can.

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