How to do your off-boarding deprovisioning

When a member of your team leaves your company, you have a set of actions to take to ensure that his or her departure takes place under good conditions and that there are no negative impacts on your professional activity.

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In most cases, the departure is done by mutual agreement and without tension. But it also happens that the departing employee is not happy, or even wants to harm your company!

De-procurement is one of the actions to protect your company's interests.

Deciphering this central notion in the offboarding of an employee!

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Definition of deprovisioning

The term deprovisioning comes from the English word "deprovisioning".

It is closely linked to the notion ofoffboarding, i.e. the exit of employees from a company.

In concrete terms, deprovisioning consists of deactivating user accounts and access to the company's systems and applications when an employee leaves the company or changes jobs.

De-procurement is a structured process, involving a succession of actions, rather like a checklist to be carried out from A to Z.

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Key steps to successful deprovisioning

In order to carry out your deprovisioning in the best possible way, here are the 4 steps to remember:

1. revoke access permissions,
2. delete accounts and associated data,
3. recover the company's computer equipment in the employee's possession,
4. Ensure that all sensitive information and data is secure.

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Typically, a manually performed deprovisioning can take several hours of work. And this work can be a bit tedious and repetitive for the IT expert in charge.

We therefore advise you to consider a solution that allows you to automate your deprovisioning. This becomes all the more important if you make them on a regular basis.

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Caution: the deprovisioning process must be adapted according to the work context of the former employee:

• face-to-face work, with handing over of the equipment at the start,
• retention by the employee of his computer upon departure,
• telecommuting situation and the need to send equipment from the former employee's home.

Why is it so important to do your procurement properly?

Let's go through the 4 main factors showing the importance of a good deprovisioning.

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Reduce the risk of data loss or theft

When an employee leaves your company, as we have already mentioned, he/she may be in a malicious mood towards you.

In this case, it is not uncommon for the employee to try to steal important data for your company when leaving.

It is important to note that this type of behavior is illegal, but this does not prevent some ex-employees from doing it, with potentially very annoying consequences for your business.

The ex-employee may also decide to continue accessing your tools and software, if you do not manage the removal of their access.

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Reduce unintentional human errors

Fortunately, most of the time, your former employee leaves your company in a good mood.

But even in this case, as error is human, it is possible that problems may arise.

Indeed, an employee who has kept his computer, for example, could inadvertently access software used by your company, and infect your operating system with a virus infecting his computer.

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Limit other security threats

Your former employees can cause other threats to your cybersecurity.

In the case of a "Bring Your Own Device" policy (asking employees to work with their own computers and hardware), it is necessary to ensure that the employee's hardware is cleaned as much as possible.

Indeed, since the latter will continue to use his computer (it's his, after all 🙂 ) after he leaves, the risks are multiplied. Especially with regard to potential access to your sensitive data.

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Ensure circularization of the equipment

Computer equipment is expensive.

And for a company, having a large inventory of machines that are not used represents tied up cash flow, without good reason.

The solution is to include cleaning and re-circulating unused machines in your deprovisioning process.

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You will be able to reassign the machine of the employee who left the company to another person of your team, taking care :

• to adapt the technical capacities of the machine made available to the real needs of the employee receiving it,
• to clean all sensitive and/or personal data of the previous user on the machine.

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Limit your IT costs

Last but not least, forgetting to remove access to paid software can result in continuing to pay for these services unnecessarily!

Let's take a concrete example. Let's imagine that your ex-employee used software, the monthly licenses of which amount to a total of 500 euros per month. Forgetting to deactivate them costs your company 6,000 euros per year.

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Rzilient, the ideal tool for your procurement

Rzilient's IT asset management platform allows you to carry out your procurement processes quickly and efficiently.

Our teams of IT experts have designed a clear and structured process, which allows us to perform many tasks remotely, without you having to intervene. And for the tasks that require your presence, we'll manage to keep your involvement to a minimum 🙂

You get the benefits of automation, while keeping our IT experts available whenever you need them.

Please contact us! We are at your disposal to discuss your projects.

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