5 Steps to Take When an Employee Suddenly Resigns

Steps to Take When an Employee Suddenly Resigns

When an employee suddenly resigns, they are likely to leave with important and confidential corporate data. This may put your company at risk since some may have malicious intentions and thus use this data to harm your company’s reputation. As an employer, the security of your organization’s data and information is paramount. But, what happens when an employee suddenly resigns?

Well, you will certainly be worried about your company’s data safety, including leaking of top company secrets, the safety of your CRM systems, compromised competitive intelligence, or even the overall security of your financial records. However, all these worries can be addressed, thanks to top-notch tech systems that ensure your business remains operational all year round.

Here are some of the most incredible and smart ways to protect your company’s data from unauthorized access, especially from former employees.

 5 Steps to Take When an Employee Suddenly Resigns

While being concerned about the security of your organization’s data prompts you to take immediate measures to prevent intrusion, you may be concerned about what exactly to do. Here is a list of 5 steps you can take to prevent unauthorized access to your IT systems by resigned employees.

1. Disable Login Details 

One of the first steps you should take when an employee resigns abruptly is to deny them access to the company’s systems, including your IT system. As such, ensure that all their login details, including usernames and passwords are deactivated so that they can no longer gain access to the organization’s data.

With a dedicated tech team that manages your IT infrastructure, you don’t have to worry as you are assured of your data and information security. You only need to notify them of the resignation and leave the rest to them. Even in your absence, the tech team works around the clock to ensure that no resignation puts your business security at risk.

Most importantly, your tech team should incorporate a multifactor authentication platform where a user provides additional information such as a verified phone number before they can gain access to an account in the cloud. A temporary code is sent to a personal device, without which the user is denied access. As a result, you have control of who accesses your system at any given time.

2. Secure Your Company’s Email

It is important to ensure that your company’s email is secure at all times. This becomes even more important when an employee resigns abruptly, because you never know what information they take with them.  It is thus advisable to ensure that no former employee can communicate with your clients via email.

With access to the organization’s email as well as your clients’ contact list including their email addresses, data security may be compromised. Hence, always ensure that you boost your email security to prevent former employees from contacting your clients in bad faith.

In addition, securing your emails ensures that no one gains access to important and confidential company details and uses them against your business. It is also possible for former employees to liaise with cybercriminals and plan on defrauding your company through domain squatting. As a result, your clients may be a target and this can have negative effects on your business, including a damaged company reputation.

3. Have All Company Assets Surrendered

When an employee suddenly resigns, ensure that they surrender any company assets allocated to them, including laptops and mobile phones. This ensures that employees do not leave with any confidential information stored in these devices, including saved passwords, contact lists, or financial records. Malicious individuals may want to use such information to blackmail you in an attempt to defraud your company.

Before you repossess these company assets, you may also want to consider checking if there are any suspicious operations such as questionable data transfers, either to the cloud or secondary storage devices. In addition, check out if there are any files that the resigned employees may have downloaded, encrypted, or even deleted. Consulting IT forensic experts lets you identify if the deleted or encrypted data may be used against your organization and thus take the most appropriate course of action.

4. Back-Up Your Data

Data back-ups are a necessity in any business, regardless of its size. This ensures that you never lose any data or information in case of a data breach or malware attack. Data back-ups become even more important when an employee suddenly quits because you never know what they can do with the information they already possess. However, access to back-ups and recovery files should be limited to a few employees who are committed to ensuring the continuity of your business.

With an automated cloud backup, your data is backed up at programmed intervals, making it safe and secure at all times. An IT expert can tailor your cloud backup to uniquely meet your specific needs, and also incorporate data recovery techniques in case your files and other digital assets are compromised.

Hackers always come up with new techniques to access your company records. Hence, it becomes increasingly important to ensure that your data and information are equally protected, especially when a disgruntled employee suddenly leaves your company. Such individuals can maliciously expose your details through the dark web making your company’s records susceptible to hackers. Consequently, this may compromise the overall security of your company’s data.

5. Reimage Computers and Other Devices

It is common practice for employers to hand over the responsibilities of a resigned employee to a new employee without going through any devices that were previously allocated to former employees. Such devices may contain important evidence of any malicious activities that may put your company’s data at risk.

Hence, it is important to remotely wipe out any data from all devices that a resigned employee had, and reimage such devices. Doing so ensures that former employees can no longer have access to any data stored in these devices, especially if they were working remotely. In addition, incorporating end-point protection on all company-owned computers and other mobile devices is important as it safeguards your company details, especially when working remotely.

With endpoint protection, you can easily identify suspicious access to the company’s IT system and take appropriate measures to terminate the session or even lockout any suspicious device from accessing the network.

360 Smart Networks Can Help

You can never predict what a disgruntled former employee can do with the data they take with them upon resignation.

At 360 Smart Networks in Atlanta & Charlotte, all your IT concerns will be addressed in due time to protect your business records from any harm that may ensue. A dedicated team of IT experts will provide the necessary tools and resources to secure all your files and digital assets, and ensure that you don’t have to lose any valuable resources that may affect your business operations. Contact us today to book a free consultation.