If each member of your team today has access to the Internet, a personal company email account and/or access to your organization’s or your client’s documents and other resources, then computer and internet monitoring may not only be helpful, but necessary. 

The utility of electronic communications through the medium of email and internet is unquestionable. Rapid responses, ease of use and its inexpensive costs have allowed organizations to make these resources easily accessible to their employees. However, in a bid to increase business efficiency organizations have instead, enabled their staff to carry back end activity through the internet like online personal conversations, email jokes and spam mails, checking online scores and online bidding amongst other things.

An important and obvious consequence is that of wasted company time and money spent on inappropriate pursuits. How much productivity can you afford to lose to “cyber slacking”- employees browsing the net on company time?  However a larger consequence of this remains the risks involved-What if an employee inadvertently defames someone or binds the company to a damaging contract by email. And other hazards like allegations of downloaded porn, pirated music and software. These pressing issues can damage the productivity and reputation of companies.

On the other end is it considered an invasion of privacy to monitor your team members’ online activities? The Data Protection Act 1998 stated that monitoring needs to be carefully considered and clearly communicated in advance. Lawyers advise that you should have a well-communicated policy and explain what you are doing and why. This also makes sense from a practical point of view because the possibility of scrutiny will cause them to think twice.

Monitoring is intrusive and undermines trust for the majority of decent staff. The answer lies in striking a balance between the obvious benefits of online access for employees and the risks inherent in providing those tools. Many employers have sought to achieve this balance by monitoring the use that their employees make of e-mail and Internet access. Internet monitoring software is designed to increase employee productivity, providing a safeguard in the event of inappropriate employee behavior, and protecting your company from electronic information leakage. These softwares can be installed on any or all PCs on the network, at the touch of a button, from one central location. These softwares offer you real time detailed information on all activities of a computer – be it emails received/sent, Instant Messaging conversations across all Instant message softwares, screenshots of what the user is seeing to details of websites visited.

If you do decide to implement such a solution, remember that it is imperative that the software you install for surveillance complies with the following:

·  Data must be automatically retrieved from monitored computer: logs and their processing can be messy otherwise!
·  Ease of use. 
·  Keylogging.
·  Features.
·  Email monitoring.
·  Stealth options.
·  Mac support (if required).

One such solution offered by netlink, in partnership with Spector has been a multiple winner of the prestigious PC Magazine Editors’ Choice award for monitoring solutions.

While the solution comes with corporate network installation, configuration and deployment capabilities, it offers recording and monitoring internet activity, instant messages / IMs (chats) and blocking porn / adult content or other unsuitable web sites.

Once installed by netlink’s trained implementation experts, Spector will record all employee Internet and PC activity, automatically archive these recordings to a centralized server and allow you to review the recordings remotely across the network, providing businesses with the most advanced monitoring software suite ever offered.

Start encouraging responsible Internet use by your organization’s employees today.  Click here to know more about Spector and how netlink can help you implement and manage this, or any of its other solutions.