How Do I Know If Former Employees Still Have Access to Company Data?

In the world of SaaS and cloud collaboration, data can live far beyond the lifecycle of an employee. Every file shared, every folder link sent, every app integrated into your stack can become a lingering risk once that person is gone.

During offboarding, most companies focus on IT processes like disabling accounts or reclaiming laptops, but what about those public links left open in Google Drive? Assets shared with personal email addresses? That one Slack guest account that never got revoked?

There’s usually always security gaps in the offboarding process. If you’re not actively managing these permissions after employees leave, you could be facing serious data leaks, regulatory violations, or competitive intelligence going straight into the hands of competitors.

In this article, we’ll explore the risks of lingering employee access after offboarding, show you how these gaps occur, and explain how to build an airtight offboarding strategy that keeps your data protected.

What is Former Employee Access?

Former employee access is what happens when a person retains the ability to reach company data after they leave. This can take many forms:

Lingering Permissions to Contractors or Vendors 

Lingering permissions are one of the most overlooked security risks during offboarding. Shared links and guest accounts often stay active forever because no one revisits these settings after a contract with a freelancer or partnership with a vendor ends. 

Imagine a freelance software developer that worked for your company six months ago — they were invited as a guest to a team folder that contains your latest development plans. Since that guest account was never disabled, they could still access those files. Even worse, if those links were set to “Anyone with the link,” someone outside your company could find and use them without you ever knowing. Imagine this employee left for a competitor, and they can still access sensitive product planning data! 

Third-Party App Connections

OAuth tokens and other third-party app connections often remain active long after an employee departs. These shadow apps keep their access alive without being tied to standard offboarding processes.

For example, a marketing manager might have granted their personal Canva account access to company design assets. Even after they leave the company and their SSO credentials are revoked, their Canva app could still access shared folders and documents, putting those assets at risk.

Personal Email Account Shares

Personal devices and shares add a hidden layer of risk after offboarding. Even if someone’s work credentials are revoked, copies of company data may live on their personal laptop or phone. This is even scarier when you think about all the employees that shared content or assets to their personal email accounts before leaving the company. They’re offboarded in Okta, but the company data lives on their home laptop.

Imagine an account executive who just got an offer at a competitor company. Three days before they leave, they do a burst download of prospect lists and share their target account info to their personal email. Even when IT disables their company account, these files they sneakily just exfiltrated are in their possession forever! 

Publicly Accessible Links

Public sharing links set to “Anyone with the link” can persist long after the person who created them is gone. These links are often overlooked during offboarding and can be indexed by search engines if exposed publicly.

A real-world example would be an HR employee who shared a compensation plan in Google Drive and forgot to restrict the link. Months after they leave, that file could still be discoverable on the internet — allowing anyone to view sensitive payroll information.

This is all more common than most organizations realize. Without continuous monitoring, these permissions and links can persist for months or even years after someone has left the company.

Top 5 Risks of Employees Still Having Access

When former employees or third parties retain access to company data, the consequences can be serious, often in ways organizations don’t anticipate. Here are the top five risks:

1) Data Leaks & Exfiltration

Any time people who are outside of your organization have access to company data, exfiltration is your biggest threat. Your organization needs a comprehensive data loss prevention (DLP) strategy that accounts for former employees – especially when using Google Workspace.  

In Google Workspace, data is shared through docs, sheets, powerpoints, etc. within these files like sensitive data like financials, intellectual property, product roadmaps, customer data, or GTM strategies that can be quietly siphoned off long after someone departs. 

Even if they don’t intend to steal, overlooked file sharing or public links can expose data to competitors or the public. Most times, organizations don't even know that their company data is shared publicly or externally – which is the worst part.

2) Intellectual Property Going to Competitors

When an employee departs – especially if they move on to a direct competitor – they may take with them more than just their knowledge. Sensitive data like customer lists, sales playbooks, pricing strategies, or unreleased product designs can leave right alongside them. 

This isn’t just a threat during offboarding; it’s an ongoing one. Companies need a way to continuously monitor risky behavior and quantify the potential threat any one employee poses — even before they leave. 

Organizations need a proactive, context-aware risk scoring model where they can continuously monitor user behavior and protect their most valuable assets.

3) Sabotage by Disgruntled Former Employees

A single disgruntled ex-employee who still has access can delete files, revoke permissions, or modify data if they have a vendetta. This type of insider threat is often so hard to trace because they are already ‘offboarded' from the IT view. 

In some cases, while there's data mix-ups and incidents, critical business processes, operations, or entire teams can grind to a halt while IT investigates and restores the damage – if they even can! 

Beyond the operational disruption, sabotage can also introduce data integrity issues that persist long after the incident, forcing organizations to rebuild trust in their own systems. 

Getting ahead of these threats with automated monitoring and instant remediation can stop this kind of sabotage before it spirals into a full-blown crisis.

4) Brand & Reputational Damage

If a breach tied to lingering access becomes public, customers, partners, and investors may lose confidence. Trust is much harder to rebuild once lost — especially if this could have been prevented with proper data access controls. 

Even a single headline about exposed data or insider threats can trigger waves of negative publicity and social media backlash. Just think of Coinbase, or Disney. After the breaches they suffered, their brand was seriously damaged and public perception faltered.

Long-term effects can include decreased sales, partner churn, and increased scrutiny from prospects during procurement and security reviews. Companies that proactively lock down access and respond rapidly to suspicious behavior protect not only their data, but also the goodwill they’ve built over years of hard work.

5) Compliance Violations & Regulatory Exposure

Unauthorized access can breach privacy laws like GDPR, HIPAA, or SOC 2 requirements. Auditors often check data offboarding processes; failed controls can lead to fines, failed audits, or worse. 

Beyond financial penalties, these incidents can put you under heightened scrutiny for future audits and make renewal of certifications a painful, time-consuming process. Regulators and customers alike want proof that you can control access as employees come and go — and any lapses can jeopardize existing business relationships. 

Proactively mitigating these risks with automated data access controls not only keeps you compliant but also demonstrates a commitment to responsible data stewardship.

The DoControl Difference in Mitigating Former Employee Access

1) Comprehensive Insider Risk Management and Risk Scoring

DoControl knows every user in your environment — and that deep visibility is powered by real-time context derived from your HRIS and IdP systems.

• Get a complete picture of every user’s role, department, and employment status — including offboarding dates — so you can instantly see if someone’s actions align with their current status.
• Get a specialized risk score per employee, that takes into account their role, admin status, sharing activity, and more. This contextualized risk score is dynamic, and fluctuates over time as actions occur. If there's a spike in the score, you know that that employee has done something risky, and your security team can immediately investigate and remediate.
• DoControl even catches attempts by former employees to share company data after their offboarding date — so you can immediately take action before sensitive information leaves your control.

2) DoControl’s ITDR Tracks Suspicious Behavior

DoControl’s Insider Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) capabilities go beyond basic monitoring — we detect and report truly suspicious behavior across all of your SaaS apps.

• Get visibility into anomalous activity like risky sharing behavior, downloads, and links created after someone has left the company
• Track logins by IP address and geolocation to spot suspicious access or signs of compromised accounts.
• See a full audit trail of who is accessing what data, when they accessed it, and exactly what they did — so you can take action with complete visibility.‍

3) Automatic Workflows to Remediate and Prevent Events

DoControl doesn’t just identify risks — it stops them in their tracks.

• Automatically trigger alerts and remediations if someone suddenly initiates a burst download of sensitive files. DoControl alerts enable security teams to view and detect if employees completed a burst download of data – a clear sign of potential exfiltration!
• Instantly flag, block, and remediate attempts to share company data with personal email accounts. If you see an employee sending 30 files to their personal email account on a random Wednesday, that's an indicator that they may be planning to leave the company, and take their files with them. 
• Revoke public sharing permissions on risky files, restricting data access before it ever becomes a serious security incident — all without manual intervention. Security teams – or regular users – can set time limits to file shares, making sure that files aren't shared indefinitely and accessed by former employees after they've left the company!

Summary

Former employees retaining access to company data is one of the most overlooked – and most dangerous – gaps in SaaS security. From silent data leaks to full-blown breaches and compliance violations, the cost of this risk can be steep.

That’s where DoControl steps in. Our robust ITDR capabilities, and our continuous, automated workflows and policy enforcement mean you never have to leave these risks to chance, helping you protect your most sensitive assets long after an employee leaves.

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