The devastatingly high rate of unemployment, not just in the US but all over the world, can cause problems not just for the unemployed themselves, but also for the IT departments of the companies that laid them off.

Even when the economy was booming, I always advocated a clean break when letting somebody go. It may seem a little heartless, but the standard protocol is to de-activate their passwords and computer access first, and then lower the boom at the end of the day. A disgruntled employee can be very dangerous to a company, and I have first-hand experience seeing one such employee take down a very large San Francisco-based firm I used to work with. Leaving employees with computer access, even for a few minutes after the axe falls, is just too risky. With computer access, the employee can too easily email out sensitive information minutes before walking away. And besides outright theft of information, if the employee continues to have company email until IT gets around to cutting it off, it’s all too easy to pretend that one is still employed with the company, and send out potentially damaging emails to clients.

A recent blog entry on ITSecurity.com reminded me of this, citing a survey on deleting accounts from laid-off employees. According to the survey, 30 percent of respondents had no policy in place to find orphaned accounts, and 30 percent said it takes more than three days to terminate an account after an employee leaves the company.