Employee Leaver Process: A Manager's Ultimate Guide To Secure IT Offboarding

The past few years have been turbulent, with staff turnover and the rise of remote work at an all-time high. Most companies will have noticed the impact of ‘The Great Resignation’, or had to make difficult redundancies in response to the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. With employees changing jobs more frequently, are you sure your employee leaver process is robust enough to combat the security risks that come with IT offboarding?

The likelihood is it’s probably not, which leaves your business exposed to potential cyber attacks and data breaches. And the numbers from research conducted by Beyond Identity are sobering:

Worse still, 56% say they’ve used that continued access to harm a former employer, turning a loose offboarding process into a direct business risk.

Picture this: one of your employees has handed in their notice. You get busy with the exit interview, collecting access cards, advertising the job, interviewing candidates, organising a leaving present. But have you ever thought about the technical side of employee offboarding?

Neglecting to properly remove former employees from accessing your systems and applications is where the major security issues with offboarding lie. So next time one of your team decides to pursue another opportunity, make sure your cyber security is front of mind, did they ever really enjoy team drinks anyway?

The major risks to your security when employees leave

Whether your employee leaves the company on bad terms or not, an unreliable leaver process can expose you to a number of IT security and financial risks that can end up damaging your reputation. Here are the major threats you face without secure employee IT offboarding:

The risks of an unreliable leaver process: a short case study

HIPAA (The US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) calls out the need for a formal offboarding process under the security rule section: “Implement procedures for terminating access to electronic protected health information when the employment of a workforce member ends.”

HIPAA is just one standard that can be violated due to improper offboarding. There are many similar regulations globally that carry similarly serious consequences for non-compliance.

Best practices for a seamless employee leaver process

So, you’ve heard how detrimental improper IT offboarding can be. But how exactly do you make sure your business is secure when employees leave?

Your quick checklist for offboarding employees securely

There’s a lot to keep on top of when an employee leaves, and if multiple employees are leaving each month, that’s a lot of admin. So how do you keep on top of it all?

Use this checklist as a key step in your employee leaver process:

1. Track employee exit dates

   Establish a routine for IT and HR to communicate clearly about exit dates. It ensures company-owned devices are returned and the departing employee has no access to company systems and sensitive data.

2. Block account access

   Maintain a full list of systems the departing employee has access to, devices, applications, customer databases, cloud systems. Transfer ownership where needed. Block remote access and terminate VPN.

3. Revoke email access

   The employee’s inbox likely contains critical contacts, valuable data, and sensitive files. Revoke email access on the last day. Wipe locally-synched emails from personal devices. Remove Teams and internal app accounts.

4. Update shared passwords

   Sereno’s IT teams often see employees sharing accounts, we discourage this practice. If it’s happening in your organisation, rotate the passwords on every shared credential at departure.

5. Record IT assets

   Draw up a list of IT assets and hardware linked to the leaver. Include laptops, PCs, mobile devices, peripherals, and user accounts (social media + job-specific).

6. Examine IT assets

   A careful examination on return reveals damage or security risks. Remove sticky keys, deep-clean devices so they’re ready for the next user.

Secure employee IT offboarding with Sereno

So now you know all about what makes a secure employee leaver process, but how do you actually implement it?

That’s where we come in. At Sereno we’re obsessed with cyber security, meaning we’re here to offer you all the help and support you need to keep your systems secure when employees leave.

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We remove 80% of the work involved with an employee leaving, so you don’t have to stress about disgruntled leavers or unwiped devices.

Initial IT audit & your bespoke offboarding checklist

When we first bring you onboard as a new partner, we audit your entire IT environment. This enables us to learn everything we need to know about your systems, apps, and tools. Once we have this information, we create a thorough offboarding checklist customised to the needs and setup of your business, think: an advanced and personalised version of the checklist above, just for you.

Once created, we run through it with you to check everything’s covered and you’re comfortable with our responsibilities. After this, you shouldn’t see your offboarding checklist again, because now we’re responsible for checking every box.

Your employee offboarding form

Now that we have the information, we create your employee offboarding form. Like your checklist, this is bespoke to you. The form lives in our Partner Portal and includes information specific to your setup and process, who’s leaving, when, where their mailbox is being redirected to, the status of their devices, etc.

Continually improving your leaver process

Whilst you’re partnered with us, we continually provide recommendations to keep improving security and efficiency. Examples include:

• Restricting employee permissions based on role, so they only ever have access to what they need
• Fully managing your assets, so you control how employees use their devices
• Centralised user profile management for fast revocation
• Single Sign-On (SSO) so revocation is one switch
• A password manager so shared credentials can be rotated instantly
• Remote device wiping so devices can be wiped wherever they are

Offboarding employees effectively is crucial to maintaining security and business continuity. The good news is you can trust Sereno with it. Our process means all you need to do is fill out one form and hand everything over to us. Our rigorous process and trained security engineers mean you can be sure employees are offboarded safely and punctually.

To find out more, or to switch your IT company, please contact Sereno at 0203 089 01 41 or at hello@serenoit.co.uk.