10 Ways to Protect Your Business After an Employee Leaves

Protecting your startup and its technology should be your first priority.

Question: What is one way I can protect my business technology/network in the event that an employee is fired or leaves suddenly?

Write Clear Standard Operating Procedures

"Use a tool such as SweetProcess to gather everyone's knowledge in the company, so if anyone does leave, you're not left with a knowledge gap. This also helps employees who are staying on board save time and not have to ask a lot of questions when doing a task that's been done before."


Have Good Noncompete Agreements

"Make sure you've got a good noncompete agreement and other details in the employee contract that protect your interests. Most importantly, you can make sure you end on good terms to avoid any rash decisions on behalf of the employee. Ever heard the term "an eye for an eye"? Don't make people feel like you've taken something from them, and they won't feel compelled to take from you. "


Implement Automation

"Using an open-source tool such as Chef can automate your entire technology infrastructure, so simple changes can be made instantly, such as removing an employee's access or locking someone's resources. Having automation prevents you from manually guessing and changing each resource the former employee had access to. "


Change Passwords

"Some easy first steps are to change the passwords for all sensitive logins they had access to and deactivate or blacklist any of their individual accounts. Make sure the network in your office is secured and that no unknown connections are being made."


Use Mobile Device Management

"I just wrote an article about this, and I stressed a layered security approach and a strategy of always protecting your company's data, even when it resides on an employee's mobile device. If you implement this strategy, you can safely wipe your business data without having to resort to awkwardly repossessing devices that may contain your former employee's personal files. "


Have Predetermined Termination Procedures

"When an employee quits or is fired suddenly, you should have operational procedures in place to cut that employee off from any critical company information. In our case, we tie all our access points to an employee's Google apps email account. This makes it very easy to change that one password and terminate access for that user across our entire organization."


Use the Cloud

"If you aren't storing information locally, then it is easier to limit employees' access to systems and information. Within the cloud you can quickly change the password so employees cannot breach your systems. Similarly, you can restrict or eliminate their access to the cloud. Even if they take a work computer, you can prevent them from getting back into anything you don't want them to have."


Manage and Secure Passwords

"We use LastPass to automatically create, store and share secure passwords across the team. When someone leaves, all you have to do is disable his or her LastPass account, and that person will instantly lose access to every login. It's also easy to create groups to automatically control who has access to which sites. "


Resources

10 Ways to Protect Your Business After an Employee Leaves

Protecting your startup and its technology should be your first priority.

Question: What is one way I can protect my business technology/network in the event that an employee is fired or leaves suddenly?

Write Clear Standard Operating Procedures

"Use a tool such as SweetProcess to gather everyone's knowledge in the company, so if anyone does leave, you're not left with a knowledge gap. This also helps employees who are staying on board save time and not have to ask a lot of questions when doing a task that's been done before."


Have Good Noncompete Agreements

"Make sure you've got a good noncompete agreement and other details in the employee contract that protect your interests. Most importantly, you can make sure you end on good terms to avoid any rash decisions on behalf of the employee. Ever heard the term "an eye for an eye"? Don't make people feel like you've taken something from them, and they won't feel compelled to take from you. "


Implement Automation

"Using an open-source tool such as Chef can automate your entire technology infrastructure, so simple changes can be made instantly, such as removing an employee's access or locking someone's resources. Having automation prevents you from manually guessing and changing each resource the former employee had access to. "


Change Passwords

"Some easy first steps are to change the passwords for all sensitive logins they had access to and deactivate or blacklist any of their individual accounts. Make sure the network in your office is secured and that no unknown connections are being made."


Use Mobile Device Management

"I just wrote an article about this, and I stressed a layered security approach and a strategy of always protecting your company's data, even when it resides on an employee's mobile device. If you implement this strategy, you can safely wipe your business data without having to resort to awkwardly repossessing devices that may contain your former employee's personal files. "


Have Predetermined Termination Procedures

"When an employee quits or is fired suddenly, you should have operational procedures in place to cut that employee off from any critical company information. In our case, we tie all our access points to an employee's Google apps email account. This makes it very easy to change that one password and terminate access for that user across our entire organization."


Use the Cloud

"If you aren't storing information locally, then it is easier to limit employees' access to systems and information. Within the cloud you can quickly change the password so employees cannot breach your systems. Similarly, you can restrict or eliminate their access to the cloud. Even if they take a work computer, you can prevent them from getting back into anything you don't want them to have."


Manage and Secure Passwords

"We use LastPass to automatically create, store and share secure passwords across the team. When someone leaves, all you have to do is disable his or her LastPass account, and that person will instantly lose access to every login. It's also easy to create groups to automatically control who has access to which sites. "


See Also: 6 Ways to Make Your Customers the "Happiest People on Earth"

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