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A badly managed employee offboarding process opens the doors to the risk of data breaches. Organisations can reduce potential data breaches with Software Robots, which can perform offboarding processes in a systematic and error free manner.
Data breaches: financial & legal consequences
The Office of the Australian Information Commission (OAIC) states a ‘data breach’ occurs when personal information that an entity holds is subject to unauthorised access or disclosure or is lost.
In Australia, the handling of personal information is regulated by the Privacy Act 1988. The Privacy Act contains 13 Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) that set out entities’ obligations for the management of personal information and it enforces sanctions of up to AUD 2.1 million for entities and AUD 420,000 for individuals imposed for a serious breach or repeated breaches of the APPs.
But this is not all. The Australian Government has announced its intention to amend the Privacy Act in 2020 so that penalties for breaches are increased. If that legislation is indeed enacted, penalties for serious and/or repeated interferences with privacy under the Privacy Act will be increased to the greater of:
- AU$10 million
- three times the value of any benefit obtained through the misuse of information
- 10% of the breaching entity’s annual domestic turnover.
The causes of data breaches
According to the OAIC there have been a total of 1,051 data breaches recorded in our country across 2020 alone. In particular, the statistics reported between July-December 2020 highlighted the number of breaches caused by human error increased by 18%, compared to the previous 6 months.
So, while malicious and criminal attacks are still the leading cause behind data breaches (58%), the surge of human error related cases (38%) is worrying. "Organisations need to reduce the risk of a data breach by addressing human error – for example, by prioritising training staff on secure information handling practices." - advises Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk.
Sources of data breaches across all sectors. Source: OAIC
What are examples of human errors leading to cyber-attacks? Sending personal information to the wrong recipient, unintentionally disclosing sensitive details, or even forgetting to use BCC when sending a mass email. These apparently innocuous actions actually represent the ‘low-hanging fruit’ for cyber-criminals out there. And because criminals aren’t going anywhere, organisations must implement the right measures to control what is within their power.
In terms of industries, health and finance consistently remain the top two sectors to report breaches, while the Australian Government has recently entered the top 5 and now accounts for 6% of all breaches, with human error the leading cause.
Data breaches and employee offboarding
Have you ever moved jobs and realised months later you can still log into your previous’ employer’s systems?
This is a common example of a neglected or a poorly managed employee offboarding process, which opens the doors to the risk of data breaches. Employee offboarding is often overlooked by organisations and their employees who are pressed for time to juggle what are deemed to be more important and urgent tasks, perhaps not dedicating the required attention.
When an employee leaves the business, a fair amount of work is involved: documents to be created and signed, email and system access needs to be revoked, and final payroll to be issued based on the agreed terms. The management of this process is time-consuming and prone to human-error, all falling on the head of already swamped HR departments and IT Service Desks Managers.
Let a software bot take care of the employee offboarding
With such liability of a looming data breach, amongst other required measures companies need to tighten the focus on the correct and thorough management of the employee offboarding process.
“Fortunately, removing risks from employee offboarding is a perfect fit for Robotic Process Automation (RPA)” – says Laurent J. Launay, Chief Engagement Officer at definiti, leading technology consulting firm specialising in Intelligent Automation.
Laurent explains that with RPA you can ensure 100% compliance to your particular Offboarding process and create evidence at every step, without adding staff costs or time on the organisation. Where necessary, the bots can even route approvals and checkpoints as well as follow up, offering a real-time and trouble-free experience.
Overall, having RPA-based Digital Co-workers perform all mundane and repetitive workflows (like Offboarding) will quickly and materially improve compliance to key legislations, reducing risks for Company Directors.
This video shows how the bot can revoke employee access to three different systems in a matter of seconds, maintain security of data and dramatically reduce the risk of a breach.
A multitude of other benefits
Increased compliance and the mitigation of data breaches are only one of the many advantages of using software bots. Would you have your IT department entering data into a system or working on high-value tasks?
With Intelligent Automation based on RPA technology, any repetitive task can be offloaded to software robots, who carry out this task effectively as if they were a member of the team. As a result:
- Do More with Less by freeing up company resources to focus on innovative and high-value tasks
- Reduced Costs caused by reworking errors
- More meaningful Jobs, by helping the organisation retain knowledge workers and attract Talent who fills valued