Hiring, Onboarding or Offboarding?

About this interactive

The Personnel Management lesson starts from a hard truth: some people put the company at more risk than others, whatever training they get. So a security program needs a say in hiring, even though HR runs it. Hiring: the security part is screening. A background check and an evaluation of the person look at their trustworthiness, because insider threats are a real problem. The lesson's author has also audited the hiring process itself, gathering the evidence of these checks for the auditors. Onboarding: the new person is brought in securely. They sign the acceptable use policy, which usually belongs to IT or the security program. Their accounts are created with the access their role needs. Security awareness and training start. Offboarding: the lesson names it beside onboarding. It is the same account management run in reverse: accounts disabled, company equipment and badges collected, access and tokens revoked, and any shared secrets the person knew changed. Ask where the person is in their time with the company: not yet hired, just arriving, or leaving.

What you'll learn

Place a personnel security task in its stage: hiring, onboarding, or offboarding
Recognize the security program's part in each: screening for trustworthiness and insider threat when hiring, the acceptable use policy, accounts and training when onboarding, and removing access when someone leaves

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

5.1 Summarize elements of effective security governance.

4.6 Given a scenario, implement and maintain identity and access management.

Key terms

Onboarding: The process of integrating a new employee into an organization, including provisioning system access, assigning permissions, and providing security awareness training.
Offboarding: The process of revoking a departing or transitioning employee's system access and decommissioning their accounts to prevent unauthorized access.
Insider Threat: A security risk that originates from individuals who have authorized access to an organization's systems — such as employees, contractors, or partners — and misuse that access either maliciously or through negligence.
Acceptable Use Policy: A documented policy that defines the rules and expectations for how employees and internal users may use organizational systems and resources. An AUP establishes the grounds for disciplinary or legal action if violated.
Personnel Lifecycle: The full span of an employee's relationship with an organization, encompassing onboarding, role transitions, and offboarding, each of which carries distinct cybersecurity implications.

Topics

Personnel Security Governance Interactive Categorize

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