How to protect your company's data when letting go of a remote employee.

• Author: Schrader, Brian
• Position: In The News ...

Companies nationwide are currently dealing with two challenges: working remotely and being forced to lay off employees amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

An astounding 87% of employees take company data with them on their way out the door. How can businesses protect their data when laying off employees who are currently working from home? Your checklist should include the following steps after an employee gives notice:

* Remotely disable the employee's logins and access.

This includes disabling access to all company systems, including email and third-party resources like Salesforce. If the remote employee has company credit cards, keys or security access cards, retrieve or disable those as well.

* Preserve the employee's data. Before giving the exiting employee's company devices to another employee, it's important to collect and capture the existing data. The IT department should make a forensically sound copy (or "image") of each device. Forensic imaging can be done remotely and it captures all active data as well as items like deleted files, USB device usage and file access histories. This allows you to keep all of the data and metadata intact.

* Perform data remediation. Once the data has been collected and imaged, you can begin data remediation--securely removing and destroying data from electronic devices. If the employee had the ability to use a personal device for work tasks, analyze the device and remove all company-related files, emails, texts, etc.

* Look for suspicious activity.

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