Digital off-boarding

How to securely manage a user leaving your organisation

It’s never easy when an employee or customer leaves. But it can be easy to ensure they have a positive leaving experience and to protect your organisation’s data from potential insider threats.

What is digital off-boarding, and why is it important?

Digital off-boarding is the process of removing a user, such as a former employee or customer, from an organisational system.

It is vital to off-board a user in a secure and efficient manner, as forgetting or neglecting to update a worker’s security rights and restrictions to the company’s network allow for costly business errors.

Hybrid working has significantly increased the need to implement a strong off-boarding process, as possible locations of sensitive data are more widespread than ever.

According to a report by Cybersecurity Insiders, 63% of respondents said those with privileged access pose the greatest risk to their organisation.

A single incident requires investigation, response and mediation, costing organisations large sums of money and potential loss of reputation.

Source: Cybersecurity Insiders – 2020 Insider Threat Report

Benefits of a comprehensive digital off-boarding process:

  • Ensures unauthorised changes cannot be made to systems or sites

  • Reduces costs, as content is restricted for non-users

  • Former users may return to the organisation. Having a structured off-boarding procedure leaves a positive send-off, and maintains your professional reputation.

  • Finanical and reputational protection

Illustration of check boxes and individuals doing various tasks

Implementing off-boarding procedures as part of your access control processes forms part of gaining accreditation for Cyber Essentials – an effective government-backed scheme which helps protect any size organisation against a range of the most common cyber attacks.

Imagine this scenario…

A longtime employee is moving on, they’ve successfully run a large department in your organisation with access to numerous platforms, systems and third-party applications.

Near to their leaving date you discuss and plan a handover but forget to check that they have followed and executed what was in your plan.

You don’t have all the details needed to be confident they no longer have access to systems via their smartphone or home devices. You ask for technology guidance but without a comprehensive list of devices, platforms, user login details, or which department has administrative control, you find that data and critical business systems are vulnerable to exploitation.

Your IT support team now have an urgent and time-critical issue to reset passwords, update access controls and run searches for any incidents related to the former employee’s user credentials.

As a company, there are some easy ways to ensure this doesn’t happen:

  • Improving employee experience by sending positive communications, such as ‘We’re sorry to see you go!‘. This can set a favourable mood in your employee, encouraging them to follow a clear off-boarding checklist and improving employee satisfaction.

  • Communicate change quickly and have a clear process backed by easy-to-complete paperwork. Having an audit trail of paperwork protects both the employee and the employer in the event of legal issues.

  • Quick and easy off-boarding of their user account and associated logins with appropriate communications, and having written confirmation of its completion.

How can you implement a secure digital off-boarding process?

Access control

  • Only accounts that require high levels of access should be given permission to sensitive data files

  • If a privileged user leaves, their access should be withdrawn and processes should be reviewed to ensure only required users can access and approve protected files

  • Expiration policies can be applied to files, meaning access must be re-granted after a certain period of time. This can increase file security, protecting sensitive data and information

  • Integrating an organisational intranet like SharePoint allows you to efficiently on-board and off-board users and assign access control instantly. In addition to this, it can provide many other tools and features to improve organisational performance

Multi-factor authentication and secure passwords

  • Implement MFA on all devices and sign-ins to ensure data is protected from outside use

  • Use strong passwords and change them regularly, especially once a user has left

Remove leaver accounts and their data

  • Both for former employees and customers, accounts should be removed and any data should not be accessable for non-authorised users

Remove software

  • If you operate BYOD (bring your own device), ensure to clean the devices of all company information that the user should no longer have access to

  • This includes applications, site logins and intranets like SharePoint

  • Ensure this is implemented on all devices if a Multi-Device Management system is in place

Cyber Essentials

How IT Champion can help you

We are your Managed IT Support with the technical skills and expertise to help your organisation maximise technology and improve how you work.

Our Microsoft Modern Workplace solution with SharePoint expertise sets new standards in creating a collaborative, efficient workplace environment for you and your employees. Enhanced by our in-house Cyber Security team, you can be confident that you are in capable hands.

Trust us to implement a digital off-boarding process underpinned in user experience. No hassle, no problems, just quick and easy off-boarding with all the benefits of cyber security. 

Get in touch with us today to discuss how we can help, and read about how we have helped some of our dedicated customers.

IT Champion has been very customer centric throughout the project. Shaun spoke with me regularly and quickly identified our needs and possible solutions. Shaun worked with team members at every level and had incredible amounts of patience when helping us to migrate our files from personal accounts and storage systems. Shaun even set up a separate account for archived data and kindly migrated everything for us. Additionally, having SharePoint and IT support managed by IT Champion helps to ensure seamless working.

Michaela Moran | Office Manager, Blue Marine Foundation

IT Champion talked and walked us through the project in hand. They advised us of any downtime, which was limited due to proactive communication and likewise, they managed their workload around the operational times of our business. All aspects of their commitment, workload and timing were excellent during this project, cannot fault it! Another quality we perceive as part of their professionalism is in the aftercare and support. Always someone at hand to support any remedial work. This was extremely important to us as a business and should be for any business, highly recommend IT Champion.

Simon Grose | Managing Director, Progrow

IT Champion are an excellent organisation and have supported us well for a number of years. They are proactive, efficient and take the time to fully understand the needs of our business. Their recommendations on Cyber security have led to a number of well-considered improvements that protect our systems while avoiding any disruption to day to day working.

Steve Foxon | Managing Director , Taylor Lewis