As companies across most industries deal with historically high turnover, their threat landscape has also increased. With employers embracing remote work arrangements, former employees' ability to intentionally—or accidentally—take sensitive corporate data, and the need for information governance controls, has never been greater, lawyers said.

"It's not like in the old days where you had to take boxes [of corporate files]," noted Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell partner and cybersecurity and privacy group co-chair Robert Braun. "Now, you just take your phone with you and you have all sorts of data."

To be sure, not all former employees intentionally or maliciously steal company data when they quit, Braun noted. Nevertheless, such unauthorized access to corporate data could adversely impact a company, he said.