Elysium's Christian B. Hicks on Safeguarding Company Data Against Departing Employee Theft

Security & Privacy

Press Release

Digital Forensics

November 11, 2014

"As companies and users store and manipulate more data in the cloud, opportunities increase for outgoing employees to misappropriate work products," writes Elysium co-founder and president Christian B. Hicks in a recent article discussing the importance of safeguarding proprietary data during employee exit procedures.

In "The New Exit Interview," published by Human Resource Executive Online, Christian discusses possible pitfalls of not safeguarding company data. As examples, he cites several cases in which computer science investigations revealed the theft of electronic materials by departing employees.

"The best course of action," Christian advises, "is to prevent thefts from happening in the first place." When employees leave a company (either voluntarily, or as a result of termination), it becomes critical for HR and IT to work together to collect proprietary materials before the employee exits the building. HR departments should treat the departures of senior executives with the same scrutiny that would be devoted to exiting non-management employees, and should also exercise additional caution when handling the departures of IT employees.

Read the full article here.