An insider threat typically involves a former employee who has access to sensitive information or accounts within your IT network. When it comes to data protection we tend to think of external threats such as hackers and cybercriminals.

What may not be taken as seriously is the importance of a quick and easy digital offboarding process for removing privileged access to former employees.

It can be an emotional time when an employee leaves the business but it’s always best to ensure that they have a comprehensive digital offboarding process and that sensitive data is protected.

What Should Be On Your Digital Offboarding Checklist?

Offboarding procedures should be a natural part of your access control processes. Not all insider threats are malicious and offboarding procedures can protect former employees from making careless insider mistakes such as leaving devices exposed or falling victim to a scam.

Here are some vital steps to take to secure your intellectual property:

1) Access Control

Access should be withdrawn as soon as a user leaves the business. All accounts should be reviewed to ensure that only authorised users can access protected files.

Sensitive data files should have expiration policies so that access must be re-granted after a certain amount of time.

2) Change Passwords

All passwords should be changed regularly, especially when a user has left. Strong passwords include numbers, lower and uppercase letters, special characters and shouldn’t be easy to guess such as your business’s name.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be on all devices and sign-ins to make sure a user’s identity is verified.

3) Remove Your Former Employee’s Account And Data.

Once an employee leaves nobody should be able to access their account or personal data.

4) Remove Software and Devices

If you work remotely or hybrid, it’s important to clean the devices used for work of all company information. This includes the access to applications, site logins and private networks.

How can Intrasource help you?

Our in-house Cyber Security team can implement a digital offboarding process underpinned by user experience.

No matter whether you need to protect bank accounts, products and services or customer data we can create a quick and easy digital offboarding process for your business.

At Intrasource we’ll make sure that only verified users have access to your network and we can also highlight the types of insider threats that your business may be vulnerable to.