Case study · People and IT
A former employee's account turned up months after they left. We found every other one still open.
People leave in one system and stay in the rest. We listed every leaver with a live account, with the evidence for each, and changed nothing.
- Who
- A company with about a hundred staff, where the managing director also looks after IT.
- The problem
- An ex-employee's account was found months after they left, and nobody could say whether others were still open.
- What we did
- Compared the staff list with the company's sign-in directory and five apps, and listed everyone who had left but still had access.
- The result
- A list of people who had left but still had an account, each row with its evidence, and a list of questions for the owner. Nothing was switched off by us.
- Time
- Five working days.
What was going on.
A former employee's account turned up in one of the company's tools months after they had left. It was found by accident. The managing director's next question was the one an insurer or a customer would ask: how do you know no other former staff can still log in?
The company had a staff list and a main sign-in directory, and also a handful of tools that each kept their own list of users. When someone left, the main directory was updated. The tools were not.
What we found.
We matched three lists against each other: the staff list, the sign-in directory and a user export from each of five named tools. Anyone who had left but still appeared in the directory or in any tool became a row, with the date they left, their last sign-in, and the exact line of the export it came from.
Accounts that did not appear on the staff list at all went on a separate list as questions for the owner, rather than being called leavers. And any tool that could not provide an export was named as not covered, so the list could not look more complete than it was.
The technical detail
The staff list was limited to five fields: name, work email, start date, leave date and manager. Matching was by work email across the directory and each export. Before the real run, the company's administrator planted ten test accounts for former staff in a set we had not seen, to check that the matching found all of them. We were given read-only exports and changed nothing.
What we did.
How we checked it.
These had to pass before we asked for sign-off.
- On a made-up test set the administrator built and kept from us, every planted former-staff account was found.
- Every row in the real list points to a row in an export that the administrator can open.
- The administrator checked a sample of the rows against the live admin screens and found each one correct.
- We changed no account, role or seat, and every tool without a usable export was listed as not covered.
What they have now.
The company received the list of leavers who still had live access, an evidence file for every row, the list of tools we could not cover, and a set of questions for the owner about accounts that were not on the staff list.
The administrator then switched the accounts off, and the managing director could answer the question with a list and its evidence.
What we did not do.
- We did not disable or delete any account. Removing access stayed with the company's administrator.
- We did not read anyone's mail or files, and used only the five staff fields.
- We did not decide who should have access. That is the owner's decision.
- The list covers the tools named, up to five. A tool without a usable export is listed as not covered.
The service behind this.
If you could not say today whether former staff can still log in, the quickest first step is a list of who can, with the evidence for each.
One-off job
Leavers with live access
A list of people who have left but still have an active account, seat or token in each app you name, with the export row behind every entry, and unlisted accounts shown apart.
$325. $325 after the agreed checks pass and you sign off. No payment before sign-off.
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