The sky is grey and muted as you make your Monday morning drive to work. It looks like it is going to rain, but you are not sure of that. It is a fitting metaphor from the universe; you know once you make it to the office, you will be summoned into the meeting room to sit before the board of executives and questioned over a security breach that happened over the weekend. As the company’s chief security officer, it is essentially the worst-case scenario.
Your mind travels back to a time when everything was going so well. A few weeks ago, the company finally started the development phase of their latest product idea. There was palpable excitement around the office, and it seemed like a new dawn was beginning to break. The idea that you would be polishing your resume and checking LinkedIn in a non-joking manner seemed impossible.
Then at the start of the week, one of the lead product developers had a sexual harassment complaint filed against them. Even though they adamantly denied it the company’s zero-tolerance policy led to their official termination early last week. Immediately, this set off alarms in your head. The developer had been trying to get this product approved for over a year and beamed with pride and joy after it finally was approved. You knew in the back of your head they would not take their termination well.
After the company-wide briefing on the matter you asked Jack, the head of IT, to prioritize removing any access the terminated worker could have. He assured you the team was on it, but you knew they were already flooded with help requests, and that Jack would just pass the task off to an IT associate to manually remove access. You thought about pushing even harder but decided to let it be. After all, that is the way it has always worked at your company. Now, you’re wondering if that decision cost you your job.
Over the weekend, the terminated employee logged back into company systems, downloaded the classified blueprints of the new product, and leaked them to both the internet and your competition. Now, not only was the surprise factor of the announcement ruined, but your competition got a head-start on trying to counter the release. The PR team worked overtime to keep the damage as limited as possible, but this incident will negatively affect the company’s profit margin and reputation for a while. All the joy in the office has faded away, and as the CEO put it in a private message, you and Jack have completely failed both the company and its employees with this security breach.
You pull into the parking lot earlier than usual but cannot bring yourself to go in yet. It is raining now, which you take as a sign of what is to come when you do decide to walk in. Suddenly your phone buzzes with a text from Amanda, a former coworker who is now a CSO at another company.
“We had a similar data breach at our company a few years ago,” she says, “and when we started looking at how to prevent it in the future, we found RoboMQ’s Hire2Retire.”
“What’s Hire2Retire?” you ask.
“It’s a data integration software that syncs HR and Active Directory information in near-real time,” she says. “With Hire2Retire, when an employee is marked as terminated, the program automatically removes their access to key programs so they can’t pose any security risk.”
“That’s amazing,” you say. “It sounds like it gives you peace of mind when it comes to sensitive terminations.”
“Absolutely,” she says. “I could never go back to using anything else.”
You look up and it’s stopped raining. There are even a few rays of sunshine poking through the clouds now. The board will be looking for answers but now, thanks to Hire2Retire, you have one for them. You step out of the car and walk into the office. This incident has been costly for everyone in your company, but crucially you now have a way to move forward.
Cameron Macaulay
Cameron Macaulay is a Marketing Associate with RoboMQ. Cameron graduated from Syracuse University with a major in Broadcast & Digital Journalism, and a minor in Professional & Technical Writing. Cameron combines his skills in technical writing with a passion for storytelling.
