Great resignation: the phenomenon of mass resignation and the risks for corporate data

Flexible work and fluid workers: among the legacies of the pandemic, in addition to smart working, there has also been an increase in turnover, which is positive from the point of view of the labor market but which entails new challenges for the IT employees of companies, especially with regard to safety. Code42, a Minneapolis IT security software company specializing in internal risk management, has published its Data Exposure Report 2021 which highlights the change in employee behaviors and the increase in dangers to companies. The data was obtained by anonymously analyzing data relating to the insider risk, that is the security risk that a company faces from internal threats, of 700 thousand company devices. According to the report, comparing the first half of 2020 with the same period of 2021, there was a 40% increase in “data exposure events”, and a 61% increase by comparing the last quarter with the previous one. According to the Code42 report, employees today are 85% more likely to leak files than they were in the pre-Covid era. Over half of the companies (54%) do not have a response plan and 40% do not know how effective their technologies are in mitigating the actual risks. “There appears to be a direct correlation between resignations, outbound employees, and data exposure events,” they explain from Code42, with CEO Joe Payne commenting, “The first indicator of a possible data leak is when an employee is planning to leave. the company”. An increasingly common event in this period, especially in the United States, where the phenomenon was also given a name “Great resignation”, ie mass resignation. A strange paradox emerged in the reboot economy: millions of workers who voluntarily leave their jobs, while in parallel millions others have lost that job due to the pandemic. Many workers on the verge of retirement, which companies did not think they would having to replace them if not in a few years, they have taken advantage of the economic incentives allocated at the federal level as aids for the post-covid recovery to anticipate the exit from the world of work, also driven by concerns for their own health. The same incentives that have led many to seek more favorable conditions of employment, in sectors that have enjoyed state support and that offer higher wages. But also the burnout of working from home – the “fake smartworking” not very smart, without timetables or breaks – has pushed a slice of employees to look elsewhere, just as others have chosen to resign angry for the lack of respect for rights and rules of safety of employers. The numbers in the United States speak of a record of 4 million voluntary resignations in April, a number that remains stable month after month, dramatically increasing turnover and consequently also the risk that an employee, leaving the workplace, bring sensitive data with you. Another factor that increases the danger is the portability of the data itself: from USB sticks to the cloud, to the shared use of Chrome in the company. Among the data most at risk are source codes, lists of names and contacts, patent applications not yet filed. And in parallel, hybrid work, which allows you to alternate work from home and in the office, exposes data to accidental leaks, and makes it necessary to strengthen security systems and restrict employee access criteria to files and documents, limiting the risks of portability and massive use of the cloud.