Internet Security: What Are They Surfing At Work?
Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company. |
A recent survey of business owners and IT managers found that employees are using company computers, Internet access, e-mail, and other resources to conduct hours of non-work related activities. And the problem is on the rise.
Some of these activities simply waste time, like day trading and monitoring eBay bids. However, some of the activities are malicious and can cause serious issues with a company’s server and network.
Here are a few incidents that were reported by the IT managers that were surveyed:
• One employee was caught running a gambling website and acting as a bookie for his co-workers.
• To bypass the company’s web filter, one employee was caught using his desktop computer as an FTP server for the other employees. He had downloaded and saved over 300GB of material, all on his work computer, using his company’s Internet connection and undoubtedly slowing down their systems.
• One employee was caught giving away confidential information such as price lists, contracts, and software code for application development.
• Another employee had a pretty lucrative side business stealing and selling company inventory on eBay.
• One woman was caught running an online “outcall” service from her desk.
• One employee was caught renting the corporate IP address to hacker friends to attack other company’s computers and networks.
While these scenarios seem outrageous, they are not uncommon. Of the 300 companies surveyed, almost one-third have fired an employee in the last 12 months for violating e-mail policies, and 52 percent of companies said they have disciplined an employee for violating e-mail rules in the past year.
Educating your employees through an acceptable use policy is simply not enough. If the requirements are not enforced, employees will accidentally or intentionally violate your rules.
That’s why every company needs to invest in good e-mail and web filtering software. Just having it in place will act as a deterrent for such activities. If something really is going on - like an employee leaking confidential information to a competitor or sending racial or sexist jokes through your company’s e-mail - you’ll be able to catch it and resolve the issue proactively, instead of reacting to it after the fact.
Additionally, a good web filter will prevent employees from accessing inappropriate material online, wasting time on non-work activities, downloading viruses and spyware, and using up company bandwidth to download photos and music.
Internet Monitoring Software Can Boost Office Productivity
 Will Alston is a PC hardware technician with Tech Experts. |
It goes without saying the Internet is a very useful tool that most of us use on a daily basis at work. I have a number of clients who have software applications that are web based and require all employees to have web browsers open and active all day long.
The Internet can be a very useful place. It gives you the ability to find just about anything you could ask for. It can also lead to distractions and temptations. Say you want to check the final score of the game you were watching last night.
One click of the mouse and you can have all the latest sports scores and stories. Worse yet, the IM chatting (instant messaging) and Facebook browsing can fill your day as opposed to the work you are getting paid to do.
As a result, there are software packages available that can monitor and report what someone has been looking at, or looking for, on the Internet.
More and more companies are concerned about what their employees use the Internet for, and more importantly, what they are doing while they are “on the clock”.
These software packages, such as Spectorsoft, can be loaded onall computers on a network, and gives business owners the ability to record emails, chats, IMs, websites, web searches, programs run, keystrokes typed, files transferred, screen snapshots.
Literally everything that is done on that computer can be reviewed at a moment’s notice at anytime.
Some may think that this is an invasion of privacy, but please keep in mind: Private things are best left at home.
Websites such as Facebook and MySpace can be wrought with viruses and can cause a problem on a company’s network.
I’ve used these types of monitoring programs to review screenshots once a problem has occurred to determine the cause of the problem, and see exactly what the user was doing when the infection occurred. Beyond reporting, these software packages retain the user-level investigative tools that a lot of clients have grown to rely on.
If you detect a problem or suspect a specific employee is the main culprit of abuse, you can dig deeper and review every detail of the computer and Internet activity to gather the evidence you need.
The level of detail is so precise that you can see what an employee does each and every second, and even include screen shots of the activity whenever the employee is on a certain website, or logged into a certain chat program.
Not only can you record and monitor Internet activity, record instant message chats, and websites visited, but you can also block porn, other adult content or other web sites that aren’t work related.
Legally speaking, to install monitoring software on a computer, you have to meet one of two requirements: You have to own the computer, or you have to notify all users that they’re being monitored.
If you feel you need to deploy such a tool on your network, do not hesitate to call Tech Experts, and we can recommend the right software package for you.