I came across a news story recently that made me put down my coffee. Two IT contractors got let go, and within minutes — while they were reportedly still tied to the company’s systems — one of them started deleting databases. By the time the dust settled, around 96 of them were gone. What struck me wasn’t how clever it was. It was how avoidable it was. That, in a nutshell, is what employee offboarding security is all about — and it’s a lesson that matters every bit as much for a 15-person shop here in Waukesha as it does for a federal contractor.
The News Story That Should Make Every Owner Pause
A few weeks back, federal prosecutors won a conviction in a case that reads like a cautionary tale written specifically for business owners. Two brothers working for a Washington, D.C.–area government contractor were fired during a remote meeting. Within minutes, one began deleting databases, and by the end of the hour roughly 96 were gone — including records the company managed for federal agencies (Ars Technica; U.S. Department of Justice).
I’m not sharing that to scare you with a worst-case headline. I’m sharing it because of one detail the coverage kept coming back to: the company hadn’t cut off the employees’ access before the termination conversation, and some of the damage reportedly happened while the meeting was still underway (DataBreaches.net). The Justice Department put it plainly — getting fired is not an invitation to retaliate — but the harder truth for owners is simpler: the door was left wide open. That’s a failure of employee offboarding security, not a failure of fancy cybersecurity software.
Why Employee Offboarding Security Is an SMB Problem, Not Just a Big-Company Problem
When most small and mid-size business owners read a story like that, the natural reaction is, “Well, that’s the government. We’re a 20-person company in Pewaukee — nobody’s going to torch our systems on the way out.” I get it. But in 16-plus years serving businesses across Waukesha, Milwaukee, and Jefferson counties, I can tell you the risk is often higher for smaller companies, not lower. Here’s why:
- You probably don’t have a dedicated IT person. Offboarding lands on the owner or the office manager, who already has a hundred things to do that day.
- Passwords get shared. The shop floor logs into one account. The bookkeeper knows the bank login. That “temporary” admin password from three years ago still works.
- Access quietly piles up. The file server, the VPN, the line-of-business app, the Microsoft 365 tenant, vendor portals, the alarm code — and nobody’s keeping a master list.
The data backs this up. In one Beyond Identity study of more than 1,100 workers, 83% admitted they still had access to a former employer’s accounts after leaving — and 56% of those said they’d used that access to harm the company (Beyond Identity). Usually it isn’t malice — it’s just that nobody got around to switching the access off. But “usually” is not a security plan.
Your IT Offboarding Checklist: What Should Happen, and When
So what does solid employee offboarding security actually look like? It comes down to having an IT offboarding checklist that’s ready to go before you ever need it — and knowing exactly who is going to run it. Here’s the short version of what we put in place for our clients:
- Decide the timing first. For a planned, friendly departure you have some breathing room. For an involuntary termination, access should be cut at the same moment the conversation happens — not an hour later, not “by end of day.”
- Disable, don’t delete (yet). Turn the accounts off immediately, but don’t erase them. A disabled account preserves email, files, and the audit trail you may need later.
- Close the obvious doors and the hidden ones. Email, VPN, remote desktop, Microsoft 365, the file server — plus the cloud apps, vendor portals, and shared logins people forget about.
- Reset shared passwords. If a departing employee knew a shared or admin password, it needs to change. Today.
- Reclaim hardware and data. Laptops, phones, security keys, building fobs. Forward the email, reassign the files, and make sure nothing important leaves on a personal cloud account.
- Confirm and document. Walk the list again a day or two later to be sure nothing reactivated and nothing slipped through.
None of this is exotic. But notice how much of it depends on already knowing where everything lives — every account, every login, every system. That’s exactly the part most SMBs can’t pull off on short notice on their own.
This Is Really a Story About Trust
Here’s where I’ll be straight with you. A checklist is only as good as the relationship behind it. The reason offboarding-gone-wrong stories keep happening isn’t that nobody knew the steps — it’s that no one truly owned the process, and no one could execute it fast enough when it counted.
That’s the real case for having a managed IT services partner you genuinely trust — not a vendor you call after something breaks, but a partner who already knows your network as well as you know your business. With that relationship in place, employee offboarding security stops being a scramble. You make one call — sometimes before the termination meeting even starts — and access gets handled quietly, completely, and on time. We’ve done exactly that for clients, where the offboarding was already underway while the employee was still in the room.
It works because trust runs both ways. You’re handing us the keys to everything that keeps your business running, and we don’t take that lightly. As we tell every client: your network gets treated as if it were our own. That’s not a slogan — it’s the standard that turns a tense, time-sensitive moment like a termination into something that goes smoothly instead of sideways.
Let’s Build Your Offboarding Plan Before You Need It
The worst time to figure out your employee offboarding security is the morning you have to let someone go. The best time is right now, while things are calm and nothing’s on fire. If you’re not sure who has access to what — or whether a long-gone employee still has a way in — let’s talk. We’ll review your current setup, build an IT offboarding checklist tailored to your business, and make sure you’ve got a plan you can trust when the moment comes.
Give us a call at 262.720.3668 or schedule a free technology review. It’s a whole lot easier to close the doors before someone walks out than to chase them down afterward.
Sources
- Ars Technica — DROP DATABASE: what not to do after losing an IT job — https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/drop-database-what-not-to-do-after-losing-an-it-job/
- U.S. Department of Justice — Federal Jury Convicts Virginia Man (database deletion case) — https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-jury-convicts-virgina-man-charges-relating-deletion-us-government-databases
- DataBreaches.net — reporting on the contractor’s offboarding failures — https://databreaches.net/2026/05/10/a-government-contractor-hired-twin-brothers-who-were-convicted-felons-a-year-later-they-regretted-it/
- The Register — Former US contractor convicted in federal database wipe case — https://www.theregister.com/cyber-crime/2026/05/08/former-us-contractor-convicted-in-federal-database-wipe-case/
- Beyond Identity — study: 83% of former employees retain access to a previous employer’s accounts (1,100+ respondents, US/UK/Ireland) — https://www.beyondidentity.com/announcements/beyond-identity-study-shows-former-employees-are-likely-to-continue-accessing-old-employer-information
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