SoftActivity

The futility of manual monitoring

November 29th, 2015

3297533849_a32573b118_zWhat you might have assumed already is now official: human beings have worse attention spans than your common goldfish. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, turning us into hyper-alert hunters and gatherers at the top of the food chain, has been undone by less than a decade of Twitter live-streams and Facebook viral stories. Goldfish (who apparently don’t use the Internet – who knew?) can pay attention to what’s in front of them for nine seconds, while your average joe on the street now struggles to stay focused for eight.

It’s just one more piece of evidence showing that people are more distracted than ever; and what technology has broken, technology can hopefully help fix. In business, computer monitoring software isn’t just helpful – it’s essential for overworked IT folks who can’t possibly have eyes everywhere at once.

Indeed, we saw just a few weeks back that in one of the most highly regulated, technical industries around, manual monitoring can be disastrous. In this case, it was airline cockpit pilots who chillingly can’t seem to stay focused on all those buttons and dials on their dashboard while their planes are in flight:Read More

Cybersecurity begins with educating your employees

November 16th, 2015

In the workplace, digital security doesn’t begin and ends with the IT guy who set up the password and computer monitoring software on your computer. Every employee in an organization, from the top down, is responsible for keeping a company safe from cyber-attacks. Security should be something every employee takes seriously, and undertakes on a regular basis as part of being a responsible member of the team.

How can employees on the front line do that? We took note of a recent interview with Robert Cioffi, CEO of Yonkers-based Progressive Computing, about ways companies can make their system less vulnerable to attack. First, he talked about the threat:

“[C]yber-criminals are relentlessly targeting the end-user or non-tech savvy person, not the IT experts at companies,” says Cioffi. “Therefore, the end users (employees) are under constant attack and must be ever vigilant.”Read More

Activity Monitor new version 10.2 adds support of Windows 10

October 7th, 2015

We are glad to announce the release of Activity Monitor version 10.2 with full support of Microsoft’s new Window 10. Activity Monitor now records Internet history in new Edge browser, user’s activity in store-style apps and more.
New features in Activity Monitor version 10.2:

  • official support of Windows 10, including:
    • recording of new Windows Store apps;
    • recording of Internet history in new Edge browser;
  • improved support of high-DPI monitors and systems with different per-monitor DPI settings
  • support of new Outlook 2016 for email recording
  • other improvements and fixes

Read More

Sometimes your employees really are on their break

October 5th, 2015
Photo Credit: Kris Krug

Photo Credit: Kris Krug

One of the biggest concerns of any employer in the digital age is the ease with which employees can become distracted, wasting their time browsing Facebook, which in turn is wasting your time – and your money. But a new studies shows employers may be (a little bit) more lenient when it comes to giving employees a break.

Read More

Protecting Your Company Network Part 2. An HR Checklist

September 21st, 2015

This is Part 2. Part 1 “Offboarding Right” of these series is posted here

Think all this worrying about disgruntled employees might be a bit overblown? Perhaps you recall the Sony security breach from a few months back wherein a ton of company data got turned over to North Korean hackers. The company is still picking up the pieces from that one – and analysts believe it all started with a combination of outside threats and an internal employee breach.

Photo Credit: Don Hankins

Photo Credit: Don Hankins

Read More

Protecting Your Company Network Part 1. Offboarding Right

September 14th, 2015

You’ve done all the right things to protect your network from both insider threats and outside hackers. Employee computer monitoring is just one of the tools you’ve used to keep your intellectual property (IP) safe, along with antivirus software, a properly set-up firewall and other bits and pieces put together by your IT team. But one area where companies seem to still be vulnerable is with leaving openings to former (and potentially disgruntled) employees.

Computer monitoring for security

Photo Credit: Mr. Seb

Read More

Activity Monitor 10.1 released

July 28th, 2015

SoftActivity is glad to announce the release of new version 10.1 of Activity Monitor – its leading employee monitoring security solution.

Improvements in version 10.1:

  • Tear off a monitoring tab and move it to another monitor, like tabs in popular browsers. You can do this by dragging a tab and dropping it outside the main window. You can also drop the tab inside the main window to split it and display 2 or more computers next to each other (Watch Video);
  • Refresh Screen button has been re-added due to requests by our customers. It was previously removed in version 10.0;
  • Tested with Windows 10 Preview. Official support is to be announced upon Windows 10 release;
  • fix: recording of Outlook on Windows XP machines was broken a few versions ago;
  • A number of fixes and stability improvements;

Read More