New figures reveal that only half of employers change account passwords during their off-boarding process. Offboarding is the process that leads to the formal separation between an employee and a company through resignation (or by some other means).
This suggest that cybersecurity is not always at the forefront of every company’s list of priorities as they off-board former employees. This is especially in the context of how damaging a data breach can be.
A good offboarding policy will include deleting any former cloud accounts accessed by the former employee so the company is no longer charged for the usage and the data does not linger out in the open, beckoning a cybersecurity incident to occur.
The same research found that 1 in 4 former employees can still access the backend of their previous employer’s website. The backend is the portion of a website, web application, or mobile application that exists behind the scenes. This area has been found to be prone to cyberattacks in recent years.
A cyberattack directed on the backend of a network could render a network, and hence a company, to become incapacitated.
The data comes from Beyond Identity, who polled more than 1,000 employees and employers to reveal how the ‘Great Resignation’ is affecting company security.
This news comes as despite hopes that 2022 will be the year for governments and businesses to start taking cybersecurity seriously.
The issue is compounded where employee turnover increases, leading to more people gaining access to company information.
The survey also found that 83 percent of employees have continued accessing a previous employer’s accounts after leaving the company and 56 percent of employees have used this continued digital access to harm their former employer.
In terms of the types of activities that have occurred with the potential to cause harm, 25 percent of employees report taking client information from a former employer. In addition, 24 percent have taken financial information.
All told, the findings suggest that 3 in 4 employers have been negatively impacted by a former employee breaching their digital security. At the same time there are signs of cognitive dissonance in that 60 percent of employers say their company is very-to-extremely digitally secure.
