Employee data breaches are becoming more and more common for companies. Lately there are more and more news stories about data breaches, averaging up to 4 or 5 per week in the media. Sometimes it is the missing laptop that was stolen from someone’s car/home/apartment ; sometimes it is the data tape that was being transported for storage and was “misplaced” ; and sometimes it was a disgruntled former employee who still had access to company information. How does this happen? Actually, it can be very simple.

You have an employee within your organization that, for what ever reason, you have chosen to release from your company. That employee had access to records, background reports, financial information, or other sensitive information about your company. Maybe you did your background report retrieval via the internet, or maybe the majority of your banking was through the internet. If that former employee still has access to active passwords, and had not been deactivated from the system, you could have a real problem.

As soon as your company has made the decision to release someone from their employment, you need to know how involved their access was to this information. Contact the bank and have their user name removed from the account or change the information if you have to. Be sure to contact your background screening company and update them to the change in personnel status so passwords can be locked out of the system, change the passwords on any sensitive information that can be accessed off site. And, while the majority of you will be able to say that you never share your password with anyone else, there are those that do. If the former employee has access to someone else’s password for what ever reason, be sure and get that changed as well. This is where you have to stamp out the brush fire before the whole forest burns.