Part 2: How assets can go AWOL!

Misuse of corporate assets takes many forms. All are irritating, some are merely inconvenient, yet a few can be seriously dangerous to the survival of the company or its reputation.

Among those in the merely inconvenient class might be a former employee entering his previous place of work at lunch time and obtaining cheap food because someone forgot to relieve him of his card when he left the job.

A more dangerous action might be someone who obtains access to his previous employer's computer system because the personnel department neglected to realise that he had two different accounts and only one of them was disabled upon his resignation.

Or perhaps an employee who, on leaving, handed back his keys to the front door of the building but failed to remind the company that he also had a key to the warehouse round the corner.

Stories of employees being able to gain access to the computer systems of previous employers are rife, and access still being possible after many months is not uncommon.

In one case that I'm aware of, an account still hadn't been disabled after six years. In the case of someone who leaves a job only to take up a similar position with a competitor, it's hard to imagine a more damaging scenario.

Asset tracking

Thankfully there are software tools available to assist with provisioning. They allow companies to keep track of all assets that are issued to staff. This includes physical assets such as cars and computers, entitlements such as club memberships and discounted canteen rates, and access to internal and third-party computer systems.

Thus when an employee leaves the company or changes his or her job, it is easy to discover which assets should be denied, recalled, disabled or returned. All of this helps with audit compliance, of course, and also saves money.

After all, why buy a new copy of Microsoft Office for an incoming employee when there are four licenses available that were previously used by staff in another department but which are now no longer required?

There's no point in continuing to pay for a Bloomberg or Reuters subscription for someone who previously worked in the investments office but has now moved sideways into a marketing role. An automated provisioning system can spot this change of role and automatically alert the person who manages the subscriptions.