When an employee leaves your company, whether it is a handshake and well wishes 🤝 or a slammed door on the way out 🚪, one rule should always apply.

Cut. Off. Access. 🔐

Immediately. ⏱️

Too many businesses treat offboarding like an afterthought. They collect the keys, maybe grab the laptop, and call it good. Meanwhile, that former employee still has email access, VPN credentials, cloud logins, saved passwords on personal devices, and maybe even administrative rights.

That is not just sloppy.

That is dangerous. ⚠️

Good terms do not equal good security

Let’s start with the comfortable lie.

“He left on good terms.”

Great. That is good for morale. It has absolutely nothing to do with risk.

Even the most professional, kind, and well meaning former employee is no longer bound by the same sense of responsibility once they are outside your walls. Priorities change. Emotions change. Financial pressure changes people.

And sometimes it is not about intent at all.

They may reuse passwords.

They may store credentials in a personal password manager.

They may log in from an unsecured home network.

They may click on something malicious using an account that still belongs to you.

Now you have exposure and they are not even on payroll.

That is a problem. 🚨

Messy breakups are obvious risks

If the separation was tense, emotional, or disciplinary, the risk increases exponentially.

A disgruntled former employee with active access can:

• Download sensitive data 📂

• Delete shared files 🗑️

• Forward confidential emails 📤

• Lock accounts 🔒

• Alter financial information 💰

• Sabotage systems 🧨

And here is the hard truth. It does not take a sophisticated hacker to cause real damage. It takes one valid login.

Access is power. Remove the access. 🛑

The part most businesses forget

Here is what keeps attorneys busy. ⚖️

If a former employee’s credentials are used in a breach, whether by them or by someone else who got access to those credentials, you are in trouble.

Why?

Because you failed to follow basic security hygiene.

If their account was still active and used in a data breach, the argument against you becomes simple:

You knew they were no longer employed.

You knew they had access.

You failed to disable it.

The breach happened because of that access.

That is negligence territory.

And in court, that is not a fun place to stand.

You will lose. ❌

It is not personal. It is policy.

The best way to handle offboarding is to remove emotion from the process.

Every departure should trigger a documented checklist:

Disable Microsoft 365 account 🧑‍💻

Revoke VPN access 🌐

Remove MFA tokens 📲

Terminate remote management access 🖥️

Disable line of business application logins 📊

Collect and wipe company devices 💻

Rotate shared passwords 🔄

Remove access from third party vendors and portals 🏢

No exceptions.

No delays.

No waiting until the end of the week.

The moment employment ends, access ends. ⛔

Compliance and insurance are watching

Cyber insurance carriers expect strict offboarding procedures. Many policies now specifically require prompt revocation of user access upon termination.

Regulators expect it. 🏛️

Auditors expect it. 📋

Insurance expects it. 🛡️

If you cannot prove you removed access immediately, you are exposed financially and legally.

This is about protecting your business

You work too hard to build your company to let a forgotten login tear it down.

It is not about distrust.

It is not about assuming the worst in people.

It is about understanding reality.

Credentials left active are open doors. 🚪

Open doors invite problems.

Problems turn into breaches. 💥

Breaches turn into lawsuits. ⚖️

And lawsuits are expensive. 💸

Shut the door. 🔒

If you are not confident that your offboarding process immediately and completely removes access across every system, it is time to fix that.

Because the cost of doing it right is tiny compared to the cost of explaining to a judge why you did not.