Terminated employee cost company hundreds of thousands of dollars because nobody revoked access
They had more access than the average Joe, and IT didn't track what needed to be cut off
In an incident involving a disgruntled former employee, a company suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage due to a lapse in access revocation protocols. According to Yad Senapathy, CEO of the Project Management Training Institute in Dallas, Texas, the company had terminated an employee but failed to revoke their access to internal systems.
The ex-employee logged back in, deleted critical files, locked out other accounts, and even corrupted a database. Senapathy revealed that the terminated employee retained access to shared admin credentials, account controls, and project tracking systems, leading to a domino effect of unauthorized access. The damage caused by the former employee amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the weeks of delay added to an important project further exacerbated the situation.
Senapathy emphasized the importance of offboarding checklists and regular access reviews, warning that the loss of a single individual with extensive system knowledge could prove challenging to recover from.
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