Offboarding

Offboarding is everything a business does when someone leaves. Half of it is human, the handover, the last pay slip, the goodbye. The other half is security, and that is the half that gets forgotten. This half is a list of doors, and somebody has to close them all on the same day.

Start with what should be switched off within the hour. Email first, because password resets for every other system arrive there. Then the main business system. Then the till. Then any remote access. Then anything that touches customer records or money. Do not wait for the last afternoon if the parting was difficult, because most damage happens in those final hours, not later.

Then come the things nobody writes down. The phone in their pocket still has the work app installed, and it may still be signed in. The laptop at home. The customer list they emailed to themselves last spring so they could work on the train. The tablet in the delivery van. And the password that everyone in the office knows, because that one cannot be switched off. It has to be changed, and everybody else has to be told the new one.

Write the list once and reuse it. Every account, who owns it, and who switches it off when a person goes. Twenty minutes today, five minutes at every leaving after that. When Linkysoft builds a web application for a business, one button ends a person's access everywhere and keeps their old records intact, so the invoices they raised still show their name.

Do not delete. Disable. A deleted account can take last year's orders with it, and one day you may need to prove who approved a payment. Linkysoft keeps the history and closes the door instead. The other thing we ask about is the leaver's own devices, since a personal phone is not company property and cannot simply be wiped. Agreeing that in writing at hiring, not at leaving, is the step most businesses skip, and it is one of the first questions our cybersecurity team raises.