When Employees Go, Data Can Leave, Too

Cybersecurity professionals fear that job cuts can lead to vulnerabilities

- By Andrew Martin

Brian Armstrong, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Coinbase Global Inc., announced on Jan. 10 that he was laying off about 950 employees approximately 20% of Coinbase's overall workforce. In a blog post, Armstrong wrote that employees who were losing their jobs would receive an email on their personal email accounts and added that they'd already been locked out of the company's systems. "I realize this last step feels sudden and harsh," he wrote. "But I believe it's the only prudent choice given our responsibility to protect customer information." Armstrong was onto something. According to security researchers and employment experts, so-called data exfiltration-the unauthorized removal of data-increases when employees leave.

In a September report analyzing customer data, the cybersecurity company Cyberhaven found that employees are 69% more likely to take data right before they resign.

Cyberhaven found a 23% increase in unauthorized data transfers from employees the day before they were fired-suggesting they knew what was coming-and a 109% jump on the day itself.

Client or customer data accounted for 45% of the sensitive data that was taken, followed by source code (14%) and regulated personal data (8%), according to the report. The overall percentage of employees who take sensitive data was about 2.5% a month.