What Happens to Your Data When an Employee Quits — Most SMB Owners Never Find Out
Thought Leadership Insider Threat May 2026 · 8 min read The moment someone gives their notice, a clock starts ticking. 70% of IP theft happens within 90 days of a resignation. Most small businesses don't know what their departing employees took, what access they still have, or what the next employer just inherited. Here's what the data says — and what to do about it. In March 2025, a research scientist at Yahoo received a job offer from a competitor. Within minutes of accepting it, he downloaded approximately 570,000 pages of proprietary information to his personal devices. Intellectual property, research data, competitive intelligence — files he had legitimate access to right up until the moment he decided to leave. By the time Yahoo's security team identified the exfiltration, the data was already gone. This case made headlines because Yahoo is a known company. But the same pattern — a departing employee, a ...