Employee Offboarding Best Practices: A Step-by-Step Guide

Employee offboarding is a critical process for maintaining security, ensuring compliance, and preventing unnecessary access to sensitive resources. Missteps during offboarding can lead to security vulnerabilities, such as orphaned accounts, insider threats and even data breaches. This guide will walk you through the best practices for removing access during offboarding, so your organization stays secure and compliant.

What Is Employee Offboarding?

Employee offboarding refers to the structured process of managing an individual’s departure from an organization. In the context of identity and access management, it’s about ensuring that all access to applications, data, and resources is appropriately revoked.

Why Is Effective Offboarding Crucial?

1. Security

Prevents Orphaned Accounts: When employee accounts remain active after departure, they can become attack vectors for bad actors.

Reduces Insider Threats: Proper offboarding ensures no former employee has lingering access to sensitive systems.

Enforces Least Privilege: By offboarding effectively, organizations ensure that users retain access only for as long as they are authorized.

2. Compliance

Demonstrates Accountability: Regular, logged offboarding processes help organizations meet compliance requirements like SOC 2 and ISO 27001.

Supports Audits: Tracking and logging every step of offboarding ensures you have a clear record of all actions taken.

Steps to a Secure Offboarding Process

Step 1: Define the Scope

Before an employee departs, determine which resources need access revoked. This is likely to include:

• Identity Provider (IdP): The employee’s main IdP account (e.g., Google Workspace, Entra ID) should be in scope, as it often serves as the key to accessing other applications.
• SaaS Apps: Identify critical SaaS apps that are not linked to your IdP. These will need to be handled separately.
• Cloud Storage and Files: Ownership of private files (e.g., Google Drive, OneDrive) will need to be transferred to another team member or archived appropriately.
• Email Accounts: The employee’s email account will need to be converted to a shared mailbox.

Step 2: Assign Responsibilities for Each Resource

Each resource should have an owner who is responsible for removing access.

Step 3: Transfer Admin Rights Before Departure

If the departing employee has admin privileges, ensure these rights are transferred to another team member before they leave. Delays in this process can disrupt workflows and create vulnerabilities in your system.

Step 4: Disable the Main Identity Provider (IdP) Account

At the close of the employee’s final working day, disable their primary IdP account (e.g., Google Workspace or Entra ID). This acts as a fail-safe, cutting off general access while preserving connected accounts for later review.

Step 5: Notify Resource Owners to Offboard Additional Accounts

The day after the employee leaves, notify resource owners to revoke access to specific tools. This step ensures any remaining application access is swiftly addressed.

Step 6: Follow Up

Follow up with resource owners to ensure access has been revoked. This is particularly critical in organizations with distributed tool ownership, where access management may be decentralized.

Step 7: Track and Log the Entire Process

Maintain a centralized record of all actions taken during offboarding, including:

• Resources offboarded.

• Dates and times of access removal.

• Individuals responsible for each task.

Tracking your offboarding process creates an audit trail essential for compliance with standards like SOC 2 and ISO 27001.

Best Practices for Employee Offboarding

1. Start Planning Early

• Begin offboarding preparations as soon as notice is given.

2. Prioritize Sensitive Systems

• Focus on systems containing sensitive data or admin privileges first.

• Ensure critical accounts, like AWS or CRM platforms, are secured without delay.

3. Automate Where Possible

• Automate account deprovisioning to reduce the risk of human error.

• Use centralized tools to integrate with your IdP and other SaaS applications.

4. Involve the Right Stakeholders

• Ensure resource owners are part of the process for accurate and efficient offboarding.

• Assign clear responsibilities for each resource to avoid gaps.

5. Document Everything

• Log every step of the offboarding process, including access removal and reassignment of admin rights.

• Use these records to support audits and demonstrate compliance.

6. Use Checklists to Avoid Oversights

• A centralized checklist ensures consistency across offboarding processes.

• Tailor your checklist to your organization’s tools and workflows.

Automating Offboarding with Ploy

With Ploy, you can create a zero-touch offboarding process that's fully logged and audit-ready. Leverage the power of automation to seamlessly revoke access, notify resource owners and create comprehensive audit trails. By integrating with your IdP and SaaS tools, Ploy simplifies the process, reduces manual effort, and ensures no step is missed.

Want to learn more? Book a free demo today!