Employee Onboarding & Offboarding Policies

This question asks whether you have written procedures for what happens when someone joins or leaves your company. It's about having a clear checklist that ensures new employees get the right access to systems they need, and more importantly, that departing employees have all their access removed promptly. Think of it as your security playbook for personnel changes.

Without proper onboarding/offboarding policies, you risk former employees retaining access to sensitive systems, potentially leading to data breaches or intellectual property theft. This can result in failed security audits, lost enterprise deals, and serious liability issues. Strong policies here demonstrate operational maturity to potential customers and reduce your insider threat risk by up to 60%.

Many companies rely on informal processes or manager memory instead of documented procedures, leading to inconsistent execution and forgotten access revocations. Another mistake is having a policy document that exists but isn't actually followed—auditors will test for implementation, not just documentation.