How to protect your data when an employee leaves

The average employee stays with a company for 4.4 years, with Millennials remaining on the job for less than three years before moving on. With so much turnover – especially among young, tech-savvy employees – how can you ensure that employees don’t carry your sensitive data to their next job?

“69% of businesses have suffered significant data loss after an employee left the company.” Osterman Research

Often, employees don’t have malicious intent when they take your data. They may forget that they’ve downloaded a sensitive file to their smartphone or think that it’s OK to build a personal portfolio of materials that they have created.

But these actions still put your company at risk. According to a study by Osterman Research, 69 percent of businesses said that they have suffered significant data or knowledge loss after employees left the company. This can result in lawsuits, lost revenue and the failure to comply with regulations.

Here are three ways to block threats to your mobile security when an employee leaves your company:

1. Don’t wait until it is too late.

Many companies don’t take action until they catch an employee misusing data. Despite scrambling to do damage control, it’s often too late.

It’s important to set up mobility management policies before you have a crisis. Start by deciding which applications and data you need to secure. Then, select the appropriate access levels for each employee. Your mobility management tool should make it easy for you to control access on both corporate-owned and personal devices.

Putting policies in place now will save you a lot of time, money and headache down the road.

2. Protect corporate data on personal devices.

Many employees prefer to use their personal devices for work. Since they are already familiar with their device’s interface, they can get up-and-running quickly and avoid time lost learning a new platform.

And you don’t need to put your data at risk when you allow employees to use their personal devices. With enterprise mobility management, you can gain control of all your company’s devices – whether they are corporate-owned or personal.

Mobility management solutions allow you to keep business data separate from other data on an employee’s personal device. You simply create a container within each device. Then, you drop all of the apps that employees need to do their jobs into it. When an employee leaves the company, you can remotely wipe everything from their container.

3. Ensure that you have remote access to employee mobile devices.

With mobility management, you can reduce your risks of employees stealing sensitive data. When someone leaves the company, you can:

• Check to see which apps and content they can still access
• Lock employees out of corporate devices and services
• Revoke access to applications and files
• Wipe content, applications and data from devices

When you look for a mobility management solution, choose one that provides mobile device, content, and application management all in one solution. That way, you only need to use one portal to quickly provision and de-provision services.