Introduction
As geographical boundaries cease to exist and the world has become a global village with employees working
remotely, the internet has become a necessity to research, communicate, and collaborate. However, with Web
2.0, computer and internet have become a double-edged sword. Be it SME, multinational organization, or remote
opportunities, the misuse of e-mail and internet can impact productivity and can also lead to expensive lawsuits.
Social networking websites, Wikis, forums, weblogs, and instant messaging have become a valuable business
resource for research, marketing, communication, and collaboration. However, they are the resources that can
also be misused. Therefore, organizations globally are looking to address the risks and challenges that the
internet has presented.
- How much time does an employee spend surfing the Internet?
- What percentage of it is for the business requirement and how much time
do they spend online for personal use? - Are the employees transferring any sensitive information through emails?
In this white paper, we will answer all these questions and detail the following:
- What is employee monitoring?
- Why should you monitor?
- Benefits of employee monitoring
- Choosing the right software
Did You Know ?
40%
American businesses
lose 40% productivity
each year due to non-
work-related internet
surfing
64%
of employees visit non-
work-related websites
on the job every day
46%
of employees actively
looking for a new
position on the internet
during work
85%
of employees use
organization email for
personal reasons
What is Employee Monitoring?
Employee Monitoring allows employers to survey employee activities
and measure engagement through different surveillance methods.
Organizations monitor employees to track attendance, performance, and
productivity; protect trade secrets; ensure information security, and avoid
legal liability.
The retail industry has long been used to the idea of employee monitoring with surveillance cameras installed within the premises. While
software to monitor employees is relatively new in organizations, the practice has been around from around 1888, when IBM started with
the Time Clock to track employee’s time at work.
Why Should You Monitor?
Employee monitoring is commonplace and an accepted norm by both employees and the organizations. While the reasons to monitor are
many, we have highlighted four losses that employee activity monitoring can save your organization from.
Cyberslacking
Cyberslacking refers to employees becoming distracted by technology in the workplace, usually due to personal, non-work-related
Internet usage. Employees may use the internet at work to check and send personal emails, use social media website to connect to
friends, access non-work-related (sometimes inappropriate) videos, or shop and play games online.
A ballpark estimate suggests that organizations lose 2.5 hours per day per employee on an average to cyberslacking. Multiply it by
the number of employees your organization has – and you have the loss of productivity. Employee activity monitoring can make that
loss count.
Frauds
Recently, Chinese drone-maker DJI fired 29 employees for a fraud that cost the company $150 million. While this is just one
of the recent news, organizations often suffer loss due to employees passing sensitive information for their gain.
Fraudulent activities do not cost only the company money but also damages its reputation and the confidence of the
customer. With proper employee monitoring, organizations can keep a check on the online activities and data transfer, and
prevent such loss.
IP Theft
In the age of IoT, where data can be accessed from anywhere anytime across any platform, IP (intellectual property) theft
has been a concern for the organizations. While the connected world had increased productivity, and made the workforce
mobile, it has also given employees new opportunities to access and steal sensitive information from organizations.
The 2018 IP Commission Report estimates the low-end cost of trade secret theft to US firms to be $180 billion, or 1% of the
US GDP and the high-end cost to be $540 billion, amounting to 3% of the GDP.
Though companies rarely admit being victims of IP theft, the reality is – IP theft exists, and the loss cannot be quantified.
Employee activity monitoring can help prevent IP thefts.
Legal Hassles
According to the ePolicy Institute, 9% of organizations have battled lawsuits triggered by employee email, which can cost
them millions of dollars.
Benefits of Employee Monitoring
While the benefits of deploying an employee monitoring software are many, let
us look at some of the most common benefits:
Transparency on Employee Performance
Employee monitoring does not only prevent unethical usage of time, internet, or
information by an employee but also provides valuable insights into the performance.
It helps the management identify the top performers and the lowest performers,
thereby making the appraisal system transparent.
Prioritization
If the senior leadership/managers have visibility on what employees are working on, they can help them prioritize work
and prevent errors at the initial level, before it goes out of control. A monitoring tool can also measure the amount of
actual time taken to complete a task, and plan future tasks accordingly.
Less Time Wastage
Employees spend almost 30% of their work time on an average doing personal work, which includes surfing the internet,
sending emails, etc. Monitoring software can help organizations keep a check on unproductive time.
Security
Tracking emails and locations also help in making the workplace more secure for an employee. For example, emails,
phone calls, and video surveillance can help resolve sexual harassment claims, GPS tracking can ensure the safety of the
employees while they are out on the field.
Less Administrative Work
Employee monitoring tools can automate a significant portion of the administrative
work, like payments, schedule, attendance, and taxes – reducing manual labor and
hours spent in Excel considerably.
Get a Quote
While choosing an employee activity monitoring
tool, consider the following:
- Is the tool easy to deploy?
- Does it support Cloud deployment SaaS, Opex model?
- Can it monitor and segregate emails – both personal and work?
- Does it have the capability to monitor the internet and social media usage?
- What skills required to manage and monitor?
- Can I customize rules for each employee, across devices from a single console?
- Can the administrator access the tool remotely or via an app?
- Does it provide business management reporting to demonstrate ROI to management?
- Does your tool solve and build use cases for my industry?
- Does tool supports customised reporting?
Conclusion
A good employee monitoring system can save organizations massive amount of money by cutting
down on unproductive time at work, improve employee satisfaction index by promoting the deserving
employees, free up time from unproductive administrative tasks, and help identify insider threats.
Data Resolve can help you:
- To implement tool on cloud or in-premise based on your infra need
- Pure SaaS driven model
- Manage disparate company devices from a single console
- High ROI from time to go live, low infrastructure impact, hosting requirements, payload impact
- Prevention of sensitive information leakage
- Control network bandwidth for non-productive usage
- Control software piracy
- Monitor usage of official email from personal/home devices
- Monitor employee productivity, employee activity, anomaly behaviors
inDefend: Unified User Behavior Analytics and
Insider Threat Management Solution
inDefend is a one-stop solution to help protect your data from all kinds of insider threats within your
organization. It allows you to monitor your employees’ behavioral patterns and pinpoint potential avenues for
data exfiltration. This solution is built to achieve complete transparency over all the digital assets residing within
your organization. With our unified solution, you can quickly tackle various kinds of security issues about data
exfiltration. It offers a proactive approach to the organization as follows:
Insider Threat Management
Get a complete user behavior analysis to protect your sensitive data from being compromised by
employees by monitoring their activities and communication habits.
Employee Monitoring
Monitor and improve your employees’ productivity by keeping track of their work activities during work
hours.
Real-time Alerts
Get real-time incident alerts for any data exfiltration activity that takes place within the organization.
Accurate Analytics
Get detailed cyber intelligence reports which highlight the critical sensitive data leakage scenarios with
granular visibility into team dynamics and organizational ecosystem.
Superior Control
Lockdown or block specific channels or devices in case any sensitive data exfiltration is detected.
Enforced Encryption
Secure multiple endpoints with implemented encryption to restrict the use of sensitive information or files.
Implementing a better security system is the need of all organizations at this hour. Our unified solution inDefend
can secure your organization from data exfiltration. inDefend is designed to prevent data leakage via various
communication channels and proactively keep you informed of any sensitive data exfiltration attempt even on
the go. So, start securing your organization against data exfiltration with inDefend.
Outstanding and inexplicable services were received by us as a Stellar from GIS consulting team for the ISO 27001 implementation and Cybersecurity. It would,indeed, have become a major hurdle for us to obtain this most desired certification if we hadn’t got accompanied by this incredible consultancy team of professionals. To be honest, the team members present in GIS consulting team are extremely high knowledgeable, professional and skilled. A special and big thanks to Mr. Naveen Dham, for being with us everytime we felt struggled while implementing any stuffs related to infosec. Hats off.