Insights for Protecting Sensitive Data Upon Employee Departure

There is always a concern about sensitive information that resides with departing employees and what happens to it when they leave an organization. Most people don’t run off and see how many people they can share sensitive information with or how quickly they can sell it to hackers. However, sometimes people don’t leave on the best of terms either. Having a plan in place for these situations, just in case, as part of an overall cybersecurity policy is certainly worth some consideration.

In the recent Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), it stated that 58% of attacks were due to “insider” issues. This includes employee mistakes as well as those of malicious intent.

It’s nearly impossible to prevent all sensitive information from walking out the door with an employee, but there are some steps that can be taken to limit what does or at least keep what the company needs, in house.

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IT administrators need to have the capability to remotely access and wipe all devices that may contain sensitive information that belongs to the company. Since many people actually lose their mobile devices, it’s important to be able to get rid of anything sensitive on those.

Single Sign-On v. Unique Credentials

Companies often have many applications for which employees in different departments have access or many employees have access. It’s convenient having a single sign on (SSO) for all of them. After all, that will help with revoking permissions should the need arise. However, a more secure approach would be to have a list of accounts for each employee and a plan for expedient deactivation. If someone has SSO access to a lot of products, especially administrators, a disgruntled employee can do a lot of damage quickly. In addition, should a system be breached, the perpetrator can access other systems with the same access credentials.

It’s up to each organization to decide what approach fits its own cybersecurity strategy.

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The “bring your own device” (BYOD) policies that many organizations have adopted of late complicate the matter. While it certainly is beneficial in many ways to allow employees use their own devices, it is also difficult to know what company assets reside on those devices. All devices, regardless of ownership should be backed up to company storage. Then, if employees depart, that data does not depart with them.

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In case an investigation of a data breach needs to happen, having tools that can monitor network activity is important. In the recent Verizon DBIR, it listed that 5% of the insider attacks were maliciously motivated. Being able to track the data that moves around the network will help figure out who may be responsible in those cases or in “outsider” cases.

It is also important that no matter what policy is chosen, that it not create a toxic and suspicious environment for employees. Ensuring they understand it is for the safety and security of the company, its employees, and customers and not because of distrust is critical.