Tracking your workers’ Computers without being offensive

2015-10-14

How sure are you of your employees’ activities online? Just when you thought they are busy on official assignments, they could be seeing some porn videos online. You never can tell what they are doing with their PCs which could lead your business to financial nosedive.  However, I’ll take you through a brief guide that will teach you how to monitor your employees’ activities on their computers – both online and offline.

I know this piece is already sounding unpleasant to some people who do not like the idea of being spied at work. However, I will also give you steps on how to block your boss spying on you.

Security measures in companies are very important in the present times, unlike the days when it was optional to monitor PCs, and such were mostly done by some vigilant organizations. In the U.S today, three out of every four companies employ strategies to monitor their employee’s activities online.  Now you know that if you are not yet doing this, your policy change is long overdue.

What’s The Need Monitoring Workers’ Activities?

Your work force’s activities during company time and with the resources of the company should not be taken for granted. Your business’ productivity is negatively affected when workers spend work time surfing irrelevant websites. Your business is also exposed to severe legal risks when your company’s PCs are used to visit offensive sites, which can bring your business’ reputation to ruin.

It can cause more damage than the few mentioned above. Still on the consequences, employees can ignorantly or purposely expose the company’s business plan/strategies, client’s confidentiality, proprietary information etc your systems and network are also exposed to risks of malware and other trespasses. It may interest you to know that a staff’s failure to maintain windows patches can cause great damage to your business. Now you see how monitoring your staffs could save you from so many dangers.

Monitoring Software

Monitoring of staffs is just a phase of a broad course referred to as endpoint security. This discipline covers every field from assets tracking, to policy enforcement and malware protection. Organizations with vast computing environment should have a complete endpoint-security systems. This system includes server software which has client software on all user’s system which can take at the same time different of these functions. The complexity of the systems demands an expert in IT. However, this guide tends to primarily explore less complex tools for small scale organizations.

Various ways abounds for a small business to have endpoint security. A web-hosted system can be installed which harmonizes the PC’s software with remote monitoring services for protecting your computers and ensure there is strict adherence with the policies of the company. You may want to add up a handful of supportive tools like professional tracking software and desktop security suite.

The safest way to go about monitoring your computer is to use a system that has the host, a server or appliance combined with client-installed software. If you don’t have a budget for an IT expert to regularly check on things, or an an experienced IT staff, then a cloud based service like Trend Micro Worry-Free or Symantec cloud would be most appropriate.  All these are relatively cheap services and can easily be set up unlike server offerings. Also, you are given freedom to establish and supervise compliance of the company’s policies from a central administrative interface. System updates are also automatically run, malwares are blocked, and confidential info are kept secret. Even laptops that are usually taken from the office’s premises are also protected by these systems.

However, if all you want is to effectively track employees activities and you are not in for an absolute overhall of your security system, there are pretty affordable ways to achieve this. There are packages like Interguard Sonar. These packages can track all IM sessions and e-mails, monitor and restrict web usage, keystrokes of log users and program use, and take screenshots of PCs on command. All these you will get for just $87 per user.

Even if you are running a low budget, there are zero-cost and easily accessible tools that can be used to log web and PC usage. One of such free tools is ActivTrak. This tool can track the applications your employees are using and websites they are visiting. It gives you a good analysis of how your staffs spend their work hours on the computer. However, utmost care should be take on such monitoring tools as they can easily be detected and disabled by some antimalware utilities. Now you may find it necessary to provide for an exception in your protection settings for malware. This is to ensure ActivTrak works fine on your PCs.

You can use the program Spyrix Employee Monitoring. The program is easy in installation and configuration, it allows controlling employees in real-time - through online-account.

Right Steps to do this

It is needless to say that tracking employees activities should be just a minor phase in broad strategy to provide security for your business and to further boost efficiency. After your decision to monitor, these basic guidelines will guarantee your success.

Be straightforward: 

Yes, being spied on unknowingly is what people hate. So you may want to pre-inform your employees on what you intend to track and your reasons; except you have strong reasons why an employee should be stealthily spied on. A lot of companies introduced this with just a straightforward statement, intimating staffs that every of their activities on the company’s PC are monitored. This awareness will strongly deter users from indecent or unproductive activities online.

Proactive filtering: 

E-mail and web content filters are usually included in good endpoint-security tools. These filters help to block unacceptable sites and restrict users form receiving or sending files that puts your company in great risk. Put them to use. By restricting your staffers from getting into trouble, you wade off future problems.

Ensure routine checks on reports: 

Why generate reports on usage if you wont go through them?  Ensure you take out time to check out the generated reports, so you can spot out potential risks and act fast. Whatever you have noticed in the report should be immediately communicated with your work force to make them know you know whats happening.

Finally, your company time should be solely utilized for productivity and any time used on frivolities will likely ruin or put your business at a huge risk.