Disgruntled Employee Quits Your Philadelphia Business

You love your company, and your coworkers do too, for the most part. However, there is always that one person. The one who is always complaining and is never satisfied. The one who can never see anything positive about the company. No matter what you say when talking to the person, he or she continues to speak negatively about the company.

What if one day this person decides that he or she is finally leaving and wants to make a statement on the way out? Could your confidential and sensitive assets be stolen by that disgruntled employee and used by competitors? Will everything you have worked on be jeopardized?

While hacking by external factors continues to pose a larger and more significant threat to Philadelphia businesses of all sizes, the threats from internal factors – particularly by disgruntled former employees – can be a bigger threat. These internal attacks, carried out with harmful intent to cripple your business operations, can cause irreparable problems.

While disgruntled employees can make up a small percentage of your company’s employees, they can cause very costly problems. Disgruntled employees are more likely to cause permanent damage to your brand and to leak sensitive and confidential company information. Disgruntled employees are also more likely to steal sensitive company information.

What Is a Disgruntled Employee?

A disgruntled employee is an employee who is dissatisfied with his/her job and is prone to grumbling about it. A disgruntled employee may also feel he or she has received unfair treatment and may feel the company has not appropriately addressed the treatment.

An employee who has become disgruntled can undermine your business by ignoring rules and policies. The disgruntled employee may begin to openly break these rules, without concern of being fired because of plans to quit. The disgruntled employee may also secretly conceal data to prevent them from being discovered.

In a worst-case scenario, a disgruntled employee will attempt to corrupt your organization by sharing your sensitive and confidential data with a competitor or participating in corporate espionage. In today’s modern workplace, where more employees are allowed to bring their personal devices to work and use mobile apps and cloud-storage solutions, this can provide the disgruntled employee with the tools to do his/her ”payback.”

How Can You Identify a Disgruntled Employee in Your Philadelphia Business?

Generally, a disgruntled employee will become disengaged and will actively complain to anyone who will listen. A disgruntled employee will actively undermine productivity, efficiency, morale, and your brand reputation by exhibiting a variety of damaging behaviors:

Not arriving on time
Not showing up at all
Lack of participation
Negative attitude
Poor performance
Speaking negatively about the company and business leaders

Disgruntled employees can become unhappy with their jobs for a variety of reasons, and many of those reasons can be addressed. In many cases, a private conversation could have been the solution to figuring out how to solve the problem. In other cases, the signs a disgruntled employee exhibits may lead to damaging results.

How Can You Protect Your Philadelphia Business From a Disgruntled Employee?

In a perfect world, everyone in your business will always put the business’s best interests first. Unfortunately, we are not living or working in that perfect world. Some employees do abuse their access privileges or even commit acts of sabotage involving your data and equipment. The damage caused by the disgruntled employee can remain even after that employee leaves. How can you protect your business and data from disgruntled employees?

Adjust admin privileges and permissions. What degree of access does that disgruntled employee currently have within your infrastructure? If you have any reason to believe an employee that the employee’s ability to view sensitive and confidential data can become a risk, then you need to remove that employee’s permissions.
Change passwords. Once an employee begins exhibiting the above warning signs and makes it known he or she is on the way out, you need to make sure the employee’s passwords won’t allow him or her to get back into your systems and applications. Changing passwords can be one of the best permission denials, as long as you do not change the password to “123456” or one that anyone could guess to gain access to your systems and accounts.
Monitor accounts. Active monitoring can protect your business from harm, and guarantee that your employees are complying with your regulations and policies.
Enhance your security. A tech-savvy disgruntled employee may not be concerned with passwords because he or she does not need a password to hack into your systems. Make sure you have a robust cybersecurity strategy, including a firewall, cloud encryption, and other anti-virus safeguards in place to prevent damaging attacks. Remember to pay attention to your business’s physical security. You cannot ignore protective measures such as collecting keys and key cards, mobile devices, and flash drives, and changing access codes.

Is your network secure from disgruntled employees? When someone leaves your business, do you know how to remove their access to your business data? With mobile devices, a disgruntled employee may still have access to emails and contact information on a mobile device that may belong to them, not your business.

Businesses that prepare for internal and external attacks in advance will generally be prepared to better manage the aftermath. When it comes to fighting cases of insider threats, your Philadelphia business needs to develop a business-wide plan.

Train your staff to recognize warning signs and red flags that can lead to an internal attack, such as threats, destruction of property, and clear hostility. A disgruntled employee’s attitude and actions can have a long-lasting impact on your business operations. When you identify a disgruntled employee, address the issue immediately to help ensure the potential actions of that employee do not damage your business and your brand reputation.

Let Menark Technologies Protect Your Business From Disgruntled Employees

Our solutions will provide your Philadelphia business with the centralized visibility and control you need to actively monitor and measure the risks in your IT system. We can help you secure your business against the occasional disgruntled employee with identity authentication and access policies and account privileges monitoring.

Constant monitoring, security awareness training, access restrictions can all be the keys to preventing the damage that can be caused by disgruntled employees. While these actions can alleviate some of the problems, you still need to protect the privacy of your data. Let us help you prepare for the unexpected and keep your business data secure. Protect your business now with the help of Menark Technologies.