Many employers aren’t even aware of the steps they need to take to get all their ducks in a row. If you have a managed IT provider, they’ll need to be informed if an employee leaves the company — sooner rather than later.
It’s the outsourced team that takes many of the necessary precautions to keep information protected, but they can’t spring into action until they know what’s going on. We’ll look at why it’s so important to prevent unauthorized access and how failing to do so can manifest in some serious problems down the line.
The Psychology Behind Leaving a Job
Sabotage
In the worst-case scenarios, an old employee might have direct access to financial data or tools. If they have any kind of privileges in this regard, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for that employee to go straight after the corporate bank accounts.
Lost Communication
There’s a lot of turnover in company’s today, and the public knows it. One of the best parts of working with a small business is that there tends to be some degree of consistency. They’re more likely to remember that person because they worked solely with them, and not 10 of their closest associates. The employee who left may not have been a dynamo networker, but they probably forged more connections than people realized.
This is why it’s so important that someone is monitoring communication channels after the employee leaves. If an old client decides to contact the employee and no one is paying attention, small businesses can lose out on more than they bargained for. A managed IT service provider will ensure that all those requests, questions, and concerns are being forwarded to a different email account, so someone can follow up no matter what.
Potential Vulnerabilities
Cybercriminals have a number of tricks to infiltrate a company, even when they don’t have any insider information. When an account, application, or email is no longer being used, it presents a more streamlined opportunity.
Part of the economy on the dark web is driven by credentials from different accounts. Some of these passwords and usernames are long past their prime, but others remain open for business. Real criminal masterminds use this information to access (and exploit) valuable assets.
Even if the employee was nothing more than an intern, you might be surprised at just how many applications are gateways to treasure troves of data. Criminals might use that data to send emails to customers from the company address in an attempt at identity fraud. If your company isn’t held directly liable for the events, your domain is likely to be blacklisted at the very least. From reputation to marketing campaigns, the effects can be disastrous.
This infiltration can technically happen at any point, but an unmonitored account is more dangerous. Cybercriminals can access it over the course of months, possibly years if the company is asleep at the wheel.
This is a red-hot opportunity for severe long-term damage, which may include anything from one main catastrophic event (e.g., a fast-acting virus) to a slow drip of information to customers for as long as the criminal feels it’s worth their while. The most concerning part of this scenario is that no one at the company is likely to notice anything until the situation is past the point of no return.
Unnecessary Costs
Licensing charges are spread out over all your employees, and they vary per account. Depending on how many applications the old employee had access to, the costs can add up. A managed IT service provider will be able to handle the licenses and may even be able to negotiate more favorable terms for the cancelation.
There are a number of costs to letting go of an employee that are unavoidable. There’s no use paying more when there’s no need.
Unauthorized Access
How a Managed IT Provider Makes a Difference
When you hire an employee, there’s a lot that needs to be done. The onboarding process can include anything from payroll to protocols, and it can take some time to get everything up and running. As that employee sticks with the company, their roles, privileges, and access levels only continue to change. It’s no wonder that most employers will inadvertently skip a step or two after an employee leaves. There are so many footprints starting from Day One, it’s hard to see just how far they go back.
A quality managed IT provider will leave no stone unturned though. These are teams that know the perils that SMBs face when an employee leaves, which means they leave nothing to chance. This is not about assuming the worst in people, but about buttoning up accounts and access that always should have been closed to begin with. Rather than leaving it in the hands of a makeshift HR manager (one who likely pulls double duty in several other roles), this needs to fall to your provider.
