Transitioning developers out of an organisation can be intricate and challenging, involving numerous interrelated components.

To achieve a smooth developer offboarding experience, it is essential to comprehend the tasks involved, designate responsibilities, and observe for potential mischief by departing employees. This all-encompassing guide from Silo Team, derived from the knowledge and experiences of several CTOs, offers a well-balanced viewpoint and outlines the essential steps to guarantee a smooth and effective developer offboarding procedure.

A well-structured checklist will help you:

• Safeguard information.
• Reduce legal and security risks.
• Maintain compliance requirements.
• Simplify the adjustment for the remaining team members.
• Foster positive relations during the departure.

If your dev-offboarding procedure does not instil confidence that former developers have been entirely excluded from your organisation's infrastructure, then it is likely that your environment contains security vulnerabilities. This implies that ex-employees might still possess the ability to erase files, mismanage servers, modify data, or misappropriate intellectual property. Malicious individuals may stumble upon abandoned keys, certificates, and credentials.

Revoking access is particularly crucial for IT and security personnel, as they often possess extensive privileges to shared directories, user email accounts, and other vital data. Users with organisation-wide access may even execute substantial modifications within the environment. 💀

To respond promptly, it is essential to maintain an up-to-date IT inventory, which encompasses the knowledge of who has access to specific resources and locations—keys, credentials, certificates, etc.—and diligently remove access from all sensitive systems. Relying solely on terminated SSO or VPN access is insufficient. To avert security breaches, you require a methodical approach to revoke employee access across all systems and an audit trail to confirm that your process is both exhaustive and efficient.

Failure to follow a plan can lead to more than just mistakes, it can create a lot of administrative extra work. This can cause HR and IT to struggle to coordinate the who-what-where of technical staff termination. Effective offboarding of technical staff is a well structured dance between HR, IT, and management.

• Teams develop a well-defined procedure beforehand.
• HR collaborates with DevOps by deactivating SSO access.
• Engineers and technical personnel remove sensitive infrastructure credentials.
• Automation lightens the workload while upholding security.
• A concluding audit verifies the security of the infrastructure.

Developer Offboarding Checklist:

1. Notify HR promptly upon employee termination.
2. Withdraw Identity provider (IdP) and single sign-on (SSO) access.
3. Revoke access to databases, servers, and Kubernetes.
4. Restrict access to SaaS accounts.
5. Terminate VPN and remote employee access.
6. Reset shared passwords.
7. Redirect employee email.
8. Modify system ownership.
9. Retrieve company devices and physical assets.
10. Create backups of local files and delete suspended accounts, as per company policy.
11. Reallocate employee vendor licences based on their role.
12. Regularly examine access logs to prevent oversights.
13. Carry out an exit interview.
14. Express gratitude for the dev's contributions and part on amicable terms! 💙

Silo Team has the capability to automate and streamline the process, resulting in a more efficient developer offboarding. This leads to reduced errors, enhanced data security, and increased satisfaction among HR and tech team personnel.

For example:

• Revoke access to all infrastructure with a single click.
• Eradicate time-consuming administrative tasks.
• Reduce the likelihood of data leakage by implementing PoLP.
• Preserve a record of activities, including who performed them, when, and where.

‍To discover more about how Silo Team assists organisations with developer offboarding, be sure to schedule a demo or visit our website → www.silo.team.

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