When the employee or contractor who knows your systems leaves, the immediate risk is often not a technical outage. It is loss of access, undocumented dependencies and uncertainty about who can approve or change critical services. Handle the departure through your normal HR and legal processes, then work through the IT-specific items below.
Immediate access and security actions
- Identify every account used by the departing person and disable access at the agreed time.
- Reset shared credentials and transfer MFA methods, recovery details and password-vault ownership.
- Review Microsoft 365, Azure, domain, DNS, hosting, backup, network and security-tool administrators.
- Remove remote access, VPN profiles, API tokens and vendor portal access where applicable.
- Preserve required business email, files and records under your policies and obligations.
Confirm control of critical services
Make sure the business—not a former staff member's personal account—controls domain registration, DNS, website hosting, cloud subscriptions, billing and supplier relationships. Confirm renewal dates and payment details so a missed invoice cannot interrupt a service.
Capture knowledge while possible
Request an environment overview, current issues, project status, device and software inventories, network details, backup arrangements, licence records and supplier contacts. Ask for known workarounds and upcoming renewals. If a handover is not possible, rebuild documentation by inspecting systems and invoices rather than guessing.
Stabilise before making major changes
Prioritise critical access, backups, security alerts and unresolved incidents. Avoid unnecessary platform changes until the environment is understood. Create a short risk list with owners and dates, then separate urgent continuity actions from longer-term improvements.
Choose the next ownership model
The business may hire internally, use managed IT services, retain external IT support or appoint a part-time IT manager to coordinate multiple suppliers. Whichever model you choose, keep core documentation and account ownership under business control.
If you need help stabilising the environment and planning the handover, book a consultation or contact BizITsolutions.