IMonitor Software Blog

With the need for Internet access at work, increasingly companies find that monitoring what their workers are doing during work hours is a necessity rather than a mere extreme measure of security.

The addition of people who work from home to the workforce and an increased need to see that proprietary or sensitive information and client details are not accidentally or maliciously leaked also mean that companies these days need tools to monitor what their employees do during company time.

This isn’t just restricted to monitoring what websites employees may visit or whether they are on social media or YouTube.

It also means that employers know what projects have been assigned to which employees and how much time is being spent on such projects and can figure out methods to improve their productivity.

So, without further ado, here is a tool that help employers with remote employee monitoring.

iMonitor EAM
If you don’t want to get too intrusive when it comes to monitoring your workers and their productivity, but you still want to keep tabs on their productivity and what they’re doing while on the company’s time, this software is something you should look into. Also, if you find it difficult to utilize monitoring software data to improve employee performance, iMonitor EAM again can help.

The software monitors productive and non-productive time by monitoring how much time an employee spends on which applications. You can decide and enter into the software what applications are needed and productive. It shows you the productive and non-productive time in terms of bar graphs which are easy to  shows active or productive time and non-productive time.

In addition, many companies have resorted to use those simple employee monitoring software to not only manage but also monitor employees, track the time spent on projects, especially by part-timers or workers in remote locations, and how much work they have already done.

Increasingly, companies are coming to realize that merely blocking certain websites or even taking screenshots isn’t enough. If they are truly interested in improving worker productivity and reducing the amount of time that employees spends on non-productive activities, they need more.

They need to make sure employees are not stretching out the time spent on a particular task, that they aren’t accessing anything that could be deemed objectionable by other workers, that their clients’ information or any proprietary information is not compromised and that the company’s systems aren’t left vulnerable to malware and data theft because of the websites that the employees may have unwittingly visited. As such, an increased need for remote employee monitoring is definitely understandable.

It’s possible that someone has been reading your e-mails, listening to your phone calls, and tracking your Internet use. No, it’s not a foreign spy. It’s not even your ex—it’s your employer. And she doesn’t even need to tell you she’s doing it.

Employers can legally monitor their workers however they want. They can log and review all computer activity as long as they own the machines. The most popular method of keeping tabs on employees is to track Internet use: A whopping 66 percent of companies monitor employee Internet activity, according to a survey released in February by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute. What are they looking for? Frequent visits to sexually explicit sites, game sites, and social-networking sites like Facebook on company time. Almost a third of those who said they monitor their employees have fired someone for inappropriate Web surfing.

Even though a lot of companies have set up email policies for their employees, the trend of using the office Internet for receiving and sending non-work-related emails continues. Which makes many of us wonder whether employers can monitor employee emails or not?

Many employees are under the misconception that their employers do not have the right to monitor the emails and websites that they access through the workplace Internet. Employees also tend to incorrectly believe that their use and access of emails is private, and should not be breached by employers. However, the law appears to think differently on this matter.

In a world where trade secrets and business information are treated as ‘Intellectual Property’, it should come as no surprise that the emails being sent from the office is being surveilled. If employers can make their employees sign a nondisclosure and confidentiality agreement, they are well within their rights to monitor the office emails of their employees as well.

Is Email Monitoring Legal?

In the past, multiple lawsuits have been filed by employees against private employers, based on invasion of privacy rights and the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’ by government agents, government employers, and supervisors. The courts have sided with employers, and deemed the act of monitoring employee emails an employer privilege, provided a notice is given to the employees about this company practice.

In 2000, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the right of the employer to conduct electronic audits as per its company policy. In the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case of Michael A. Smyth vs. The Pillsbury Company, 914 F. Supp. 97 (E.D. Pa. 1996), using the grounds of balancing-of-interests test, the court decided in favor of the company’s interest, thereby allowing employers to prevent inappropriate and unprofessional behavior pertaining to email communications or Internet usage by employees. Thus, employees can claim no right to privacy for non-work-related activities being carried out at the workplace, especially if the employer has disallowed employees from doing so through an email and Internet policy.

Employers Must Have An Email Policy

The employer must have a clearly written email policy in place, and must notify the employees of their practice of monitoring employee emails. Thus, once the employees have been notified about the company policy on monitoring emails, they cannot claim rights under reasonable expectation of privacy.

Companies that impose such monitoring must maintain an employee handbook that explicitly mentions the company’s policies on email monitoring and other restrictions. Such a handbook usually explains in detail about the extent of monitoring being practiced by the company. It also informs the employees not to expect privacy while dealing with emails during work. Such a handbook stating the company’s policy is considered to be a sufficient step towards notifying the employees.

Federal Law Allows Email Monitoring
The federal law of Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) does not afford employees the privilege of claiming privacy protection for non-work-related emails and Internet usage. The email can be intercepted, as long as it is in transit, and emails can be audited as well. However, the ECPA restricts employers for intentionally intercepting emails that are stored on the computer server. This ban on email interception has three exceptions, which gives companies the right to monitor the emails of their employee. The following exceptions that allow monitoring employee usage of emails are:

1. Consent exception: When the employee reads and acknowledges the email monitoring policy given by the employer.
2. Provider exception: The employer must be the sole provider of the system on which the employee works, and not a third-party servicer. Therefore, employers are allowed to examine emails on the systems provided by them to the employees.
3. Ordinary-course-of-business exception: This exception allows employers to monitor emails sent during the ordinary course of a workday, and includes both work-related and personal emails that were sent from an office system.

The aforementioned exceptions and the employer’s right to intercept emails were enforced in the 1993 case of Bourke vs. Nissan Motor Corp., in U.S.A., in which Nissan won the case. Using intercepted emails, Nissan was able to prove that it had not violated the privacy or unfairly dismissed two employees for sharing sexually explicit emails at the workplace.

Employers must not delay in implementing such an email policy, as such a policy can act as a handy tool against privacy claims, and prevents sensitive business information from being breached or leaked.

So that means, as the owner, we could choose some employee monitoring software, like the iMonitor EAM or iMonitor Keylogger Pro,  to help you improve employee work efficiency and productivity.

Do you know what your employees are doing on the Web? At a minimum, they’re probably goofing off watching YouTube videos. At worst, they could be steering your company toward financial ruin. In this quick guide, I’ll show you how to keep an eye on employee Internet use and monitor just about everything else they do with their PCs.

I can already hear the groans of disgruntled readers as I type these words (and if you’re worried about privacy at work, you have ways to stop your boss from spying on you). But gone are the days when PC monitoring was an optional, draconian security measure practiced only by especially vigilant organizations. Today, more than three-quarters of U.S. companies monitor employee Internet use. If your business is in the remaining quarter that doesn’t do so, you’re probably overdue for a policy change.

Why You Should Monitor
Everything your team does on company time–and on company resources–matters. Time spent on frivolous Websites can seriously hamper productivity, and visiting objectionable sites on company PCs can subject your business to serious legal risks, including costly harassment suits from staffers who may be exposed to offensive content.

That doesn’t look like work to me. iMonitor can give you a real-time look at employees’ screens.
Other consequences may be far worse than mere productivity loss or a little legal hot water. Either unintentionally or maliciously, employees can reveal proprietary information, jeopardizing business strategy, customer confidentiality, data integrity, and more.
And, of course, unchecked Web activity can expose your network and systems to dangers from malware and other intrusions. Even something as simple as a worker’s failure to keep up with Windows patches can be a threat to your business, so don’t think of monitoring as merely snooping.

Employee Monitoring Software
Employee monitoring is just one facet of a larger discipline known as endpoint security, which includes everything from malware protection to policy enforcement and asset tracking. Large enterprise computing environments demand comprehensive endpoint-security systems, consisting of server software coupled with client software on each user’s machine, that can handle many of these functions at once. These systems tend to be complex enough to require the expertise of a trained IT pro. But in this guide, I’ll be looking primarily at simpler tools designed for smaller organizations.

For a small business, you have several good ways to achieve endpoint security. You can install a Web-hosted system that combines software on the PC with remote monitoring services to protect your computers and enforce compliance with company policies. You can combine a few complementary tools, such as a desktop security suite and professional tracking software. Or, if your company is very small and your budget is tight, you can adopt free tools à la carte.

Symantec’s cloud-based endpoint-protection service can monitor all of your company’s PCs with minimal setup time.
The most secure way to monitor PC use is to deploy a system that consists of a host, server, or appliance together with client-installed software. Unless you have a dedicated IT staff or the budget to bring someone in on a regular basis to check on things, a cloud-based service–such as Symantec.cloud or Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security–is probably the best choice. These services are relatively inexpensive and easy to set up compared with server offerings, and they give you the flexibility to set and monitor compliance with acceptable-use policies from a single management interface. They also deploy system security updates automatically, block malware, and protect sensitive files to prevent data from leaking out of your company. Better still, these hosted systems effectively protect laptops that frequently leave the office.
The cost for a hosted endpoint-security service is generally very low: A five-client license for Trend Micro Worry-Free will set you back less than $300 for two years.

If you’re not up for a total security overhaul and you just want to track user activity on a few systems, you have several affordable ways to go about it. Packages such as Interguard Sonar can monitor all e-mail and IM sessions, track and filter Web usage, log users’ keystrokes and program use, and capture screenshots on command for as little as $87 per user.

If you’re really on a shoestring budget, plenty of free and open-source tools can log PC and Web use. A freebie called iMonitor, for instance, can keep tabs on which applications your staffers are using and which sites they’re visiting, complete with simple reports that give you a pretty clear idea as to how employees are spending their time on their PCs. A word of caution on stand-alone tools, though: Some antimalware utilities can quickly identify and disable stand-alone monitoring tools, so you may need to create an exception in your malware protection settings to ensure that iMonitor can work properly on your systems.

Best Practices
It should go without saying that employee monitoring ought to be just one small component in a comprehensive strategy to protect your business and maintain productivity. Once you’ve made the choice to monitor, you should follow these general guidelines to ensure your success.

Be forthright: Nobody likes being spied on unwittingly. Unless you think someone on your team poses a serious threat that requires covert monitoring, it’s best to be up front with staffers about what you track and why. Many companies accomplish this with a simple statement in the employee handbook telling workers plainly that everything they do on company computers, including individual keystrokes, can and will be tracked. Letting employees know that their behavior is being monitored can serve as a powerful deterrent against unwanted online activity.

Filter proactively: Most good endpoint-security tools include Web and e-mail content filters that can block inappropriate sites and prevent users from sending or receiving files that can jeopardize your business. Use them. By limiting the ways your staffers can get into trouble, you can prevent problems up front.

Check reports regularly: There’s little point in generating usage reports if you’re not going to look at them. Take the time to at least spot-check the reports that your monitoring software generates so that you can identify potential problems early and take remedial action. Whatever you discover–whether it’s a time-wasting Website that everyone is watching this week or a single person who is addicted to solitaire–you can often fix problems with a simple e-mail that tells your team you know what’s up: “Just a reminder, people: Chatroulette is not an appropriate use of company time.”