The Great Resignation: Four Strategies to Protect Corporate Data
As individuals leave the workforce in large numbers – and many find themselves no longer working in traditional offices – what happens to the IT assets and data they leave behind?
Adapting to workplace transformation fueled by the great resignation trend requires a proactive and consistent approach. Blancco’s EVP of products and technology, Russ Ernst, discusses how enterprises can successfully overcome the challenges they face from a data security perspective.
Of the 68.9 million job separations in the United States in 2021, 47.4 million people left voluntarily with no plans to return. Many opted to retire early. Others take care of family or reassess their lives in the Covid era. This trend has been so widespread that it has been named the Great Resignation.
One threat of this trend that many businesses have not considered is the data security risk they face, especially in highly regulated industries like finance, legal, and healthcare. As individuals leave the workforce in large numbers – and many find themselves no longer working in traditional offices – what happens to the IT assets and data they leave behind?
One of the most important considerations – and the biggest opportunity for companies to be proactive when effectively and efficiently navigating the global workforce shift – is managing information access for exiting employees. An ex-worker’s ability to access company accounts, internal systems, proprietary files, and other data could pose a serious business risk. The challenge is not so much a result of innocent mistakes as it is a result of the maturity level of the enterprise’s data management processes.
See More: Cross-organization Data-sharing: Lessons from Minister Theodore Agnew’s Resignation
Key Strategies for Smarter Corporate Data Protection
So how can a business boost its data management maturity and better protect its critical information? The following four strategies will help enterprises to protect corporate data when employees exit:
- Leverage the power of single sign-on: Developing an off-boarding process that gives the business better and faster control of employee access to data and company infrastructure is critical. One effective security measure is to use single sign-on for corporate accounts and systems whenever possible. A companywide single sign-on policy and protocol allows the business to turn access on and off at a moment’s notice. This mitigates the risk of breaches or data leakage when turning off a former employee’s account access is overlooked, or a disgruntled employee deliberately attempts to cause havoc.
- Leave less room for error with automation: Technological advancements have enabled enterprises to take advantage of automation capabilities via commonly used platforms such as ServiceNow to scale employee exit protocols more effectively. These tools can be applied to data security as well. For example, specific tasks can trigger policies and checklists that aid in removing access to data, retrieving assets, and initiating data erasure protocols. Automated checklists can also include flagging or assigning tasks to monitor former employees who try to access data after departure dates.
- Ensure data sanitization best practices for remote workers: Businesses must consider how to facilitate exits for remote workers who may have company data stored in their homes. Company protocols should be modified to address the remote workforce with additional security measures, including data sanitization that is not limited to refreshing laptops in transit but also covers remote employees in transition. If approached meticulously, improved data sanitization practices can be highly effective for global organizations seeking to protect their enterprise data.
- Address BYOD data leakage: A proactive approach is needed not only for optimizing IT processes for company-owned assets but also for addressing devices that employees own and use for professional purposes. Organizations with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies that allow employees to use personal devices for work risk running into challenges with data leakage when an employee leaves the business. In most cases, a business has no control over employee-owned smartphones. Although some enterprise policies include a clause that gives the company the right to wipe the whole device, many companies do not enforce this policy. A better strategy would be to use an industry-recognized mobile device management system that provides data containerization. Doing so enables the business to retain control over some company information on an employee’s devices without risking the loss of that individual’s personal data.
As organizations struggle with the fallout from the great resignation, they must not let the chaos and upheaval in the workplace put company and customer data at risk. Proactive strategies related to the shifting landscape in the workplace are critical to creating a seamless and scalable environment for successful data security practices.
What proactive strategies can you think of to protect corporate data better? Share with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We’d love to know!
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