Why Terminate An Employee’s Access?
Employee termination is an unfortunate part of running a business. Whether an employee leaves voluntarily or involuntarily, it’s important to know how to quickly reduce the access that person once had. Once your company has an effective termination procedure to reference, the process should be smooth and headache free. After all, your business and data are important and precious, and you need to know how to protect it.
Access control management isn’t a one-person job, so before you even begin the termination process it’s wise to give the IT department a heads up. The degree to which information technology and access control have been integrated into today’s businesses is immense, and it can take a few days to dismantle an employee’s access.
- Revoke all physical controls. Access control begins with the individual’s credentials, so make sure to collect all physical access control items such as ID cards, access fobs and keys.
- Remove biometric access. Biometric access control is becoming increasingly popular in the workplace environment. If your business utilizes any type of biometric access, it’s important to make sure the files associated with the employee being terminated are removed. That means fingerprint, retina, palm and face patterns.
- Disable all network access. If your company uses a master access list of active passwords, tell the system to deny any passcodes associated with the user being terminated. If your system doesn’t have a deny function, delete the user and their associated passwords.
- Monitor employee access. Any ex-employee can pose a threat to your data. Passwords and PINs are more difficult to safeguard as it’s near impossible to determine if any employee has passwords other than their own. Your employee database should know what resources are available to employees, and when and where those employees access your system.
- Disable remote access and email accounts. Revoking an employee’s passwords and PINs may go hand in hand with their computer privileges, but don’t overlook their remote access ability or email account. Once an employee is gone they should no longer have access to any emails that may contain important business information.
- Reclaim all company-owned property. It may sound obvious, but even with their credentials revoked an employee may still have compromising data on a work laptop or tablet. Make sure to reclaim all legal documents pertaining to sales or client data that no one outside of the company would normally possess.
Employee termination is never easy, but it’s important to have a comprehensive termination procedure in place to safeguard your company. If your company is in need of top-notch IT consulting, whether it’s a result of an employee termination or not, contact Customer 1st Communications today! Our team can install a variety of access control technologies to keep your valuable data in the right hands.
