There is a reason that we tell companies to revoke access as soon as an employee leaves the company especially if they have been fired. If a person has been fired they can try to retaliate against the employer by damaging office systems, equipment, data etc or leak/corrupt data & intellectual property as well.
Which is why once a person leaves the company we should immediately lock them out of the system, change any passwords they had access to, remove their access from entering the facility etc. Some of you might ask if this is really required/needed so here’s the latest example of what can happen if you don’t revoke access. Two employees in Bangalore were fired and they decided to enter the office when no one was present and set valuables in the office on fire. Now obviously they will be caught and punished but that will not bring back the valuables that were burnt and if the company didn’t have a strong backup system (or copies of the stuff that was burnt) then the company can be in real trouble.
When you are let go it is quite natural to be upset and want payback. However, doing something like this is just going to ensure that you never get to work in that industry again. I covered a lot of this in my previous post that talked about not burning bridges by behaving unprofessionally when you leave a company and we can all agree that breaking into the office and setting things on fire is extremely unprofessional. So please don’t do things like this unless you enjoy sitting in jail and look forward to never working again.
– Suramya