MONITORING SOFTWARE BLOG

A successful insider threat can cause a lot of harm to a business of any size, costing a company thousands if not millions of dollars in lost assets, downtime, compromised customer assets, and expending resources to mitigate the breach. Therefore, businesses of all sizes should seek ways to mitigate insider threats, like an insider threat detection program, so that they can increase the chances of stopping one before it happens.

One method of managing an insider threat detection program is by using user and entity behavior analytics (UBA and EBA, or UEBA). These tools allow project managers, business owners, and management to track a user’s behavior, and, of course, the behavior patterns of an entity, to try to identify a sort of common pattern or trend. Therefore, when that trend is disrupted, those monitoring the users can potentially do something to protect their business against an insider threat. 

Maybe you’re an employee that thinks your employer is monitoring you at work and you’re not sure how they can do that. Or, perhaps you are a business owner managing a small team and you’re not quite sure your employees are working as hard as they say they are. 

In either case, you’re wondering what employee monitoring software is, what it is capable of, and how it can potentially improve your workplace. 

Industry professionals agree that employee monitoring software can drastically improve your workplace productivity and help to minimize the chance of an insider threat. Employers are also allowed to exhibit some form of employee monitoring while employees are on the clock, so long as they are mindful of employees’ privacy rights. 

Employee monitoring software can provide employers with an inside look into employee productivity and employee intentions. Not only is this software useful for identifying potential rogue employees, but it can also highlight when a business may be vulnerable to data breaches or time theft. 

Employee monitoring software is an effective tool to improve employee performance and productivity and reduce the risk of an insider threat before it becomes a problem. But if you’ve never used employee computer monitoring software before, it might seem daunting or like an invasive technology.

The good news is that monitoring software is extremely easy to use and can be easily integrated into a comprehensive employee monitoring system, even if you have a remote team or you are managing a massive workforce. 

Even when working with a remote term, you still need to stay on top of the productivity levels of each remote worker on your team and ensure that no suspicious activity is happening. But when you’re not physically in the same space as your remote employees and they are not using work computers, monitoring their computer activity might be hard to do. 

You can very easily monitor user activity remotely with employee monitoring software. This software can be stealth or it can be used actively with your employees to boost productivity. In either case, computer monitoring software will tell you more about what’s happening on an employee computer during work hours. 

Insider threats can significantly damage a company financially and dismantle many of the structures that a business is built upon. So your business needs to set up safeguards that protect against a data breach from an internal threat. 

Unfortunately, insider threats can occur because an insider has access to your company’s critical assets and finds deceptive ways to access those assets for nefarious reasons. 

Not only do they sneak around company files but they may also gain valuable information about your company’s security system that makes it easier for others to gain access to your vital business information and data.

It’s important for both small businesses and enterprises to adopt some type of computer monitoring to ensure that employees are working during working hours and to monitor insider threats that could compromise company assets. 

On top of that, computer monitoring is particularly important for businesses that engage with a remote worker so that there is an added form of protection against cyber attacks and time theft. 

Chances are, your business already does computer monitoring. A 2018 survey found that 50% of corporations are using some type of monitoring technique to monitor their employees, which is a 20% increase from 2015. These monitoring techniques might involve the analysis of employee email text or social media messages, looking at who employees are meeting with, gathering biometric data, and more. 

So while computer monitoring is prevalent, concerns have been raised about the overreach of computer monitoring and whether or not this violates employee privacy.