Monday, February 7, 2011
What To Look For In Software Monitoring Programs
One of the primary importance of the program is monitoring online content. This has particularly been helpful to bosses and parents as it has allowed them to access emails, chat rooms, websites, blog spots among other web material. The bosses have been able to control the web activity at the work place hence, restrain workers from engaging in idle and unproductive online activity during working hours. Some bosses have taken this to another level by blocking social networks and websites which promote idleness at work.
Parents and employers among other people have been able to successfully curb any abuse of their PC and shared networks through the monitoring programs. For parents it has been about protecting their children from negatively impacting content and sites while employees have been keen to reduce the wastage of time and resources on unproductive online activities during working hours.
This has also helped institutions especially the public ones to regulate what users of their computer networks can access. Universities, colleges, libraries and cyber cafes are some of the main beneficiaries of these programs as they can control what the public accesses.
Sharing a PC with other people can be tricky since the machine is actually under one name. Whenever another person accesses or engages in illegal activities through the PC the owner will be the ultimate suspect for a crime which they may not even be aware of. The monitoring programs help combat this by allowing the owner access to every other user's activity. This can help one deal with a situation before it gets out of hand. Another consideration is the features included in the programs. The program that one purchases must be able to maximize on control in order for it to be effective. Online observation is one key feature. The program being purchased must be able to record all sites visited and searches made via the internet. It must also record copies of instant messages, chat messages as well email attachments and all correspondences via email. The best programs can give you access to user names and passwords of different accounts accessed.
For one to acquire the licensed and legal monitoring program, they must fulfill either of three conditions. They must prove that they own a computer and they must prove that other users of the computer network are aware and consent to the installation of the program or alternatively they must prove that they are parents of a minor. For parents with young children, this might not be a problem.
To acquire the software monitoring program one needs to certify that they are either parents to a minor, owner of a computer or they have the consent of other users of the network to install the program. Illegal installation of such, monitoring programs leads to spyware and this poses legal threat to the owner of the computer.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Desktop Remote Monitoring Service, Observe Your Staff Activities
Countless studies have revealed that a majority of employees who have access to the internet during their workday spend a lot of time conducting non-work related web browsing at the expense of their employer. The result is hours upon hours of lost production and potential profits. But there is a way to effectively increase production and it comes in the form of a desktop remote monitoring service.
You may have tried various tools and tactics to keep your employees on track, only to find that you were wasting your money. Cutting internet access is probably not an option. Using internet filtering services may block websites that your employees need to access to do their jobs. Restricting access to the internet is too costly and time consuming.
For these reasons, you may be considering a desktop remote monitoring service. These services provide professional internet monitoring and keep tabs on how much time your employees devote to productivity and how much time they spend playing at your expensive. Furthermore, these services can also be used to ensure that your employees are not accessing websites that can be harmful to your network or that they are not leaking confidential data, either unintentionally or not.
There are many tools available to choose from. Some things that a business owner needs to consider are the cost of the services, what is monitored, and how the data that is being monitored is accessed. Monitoring internet usage can be a full time job for one or more people, so the employer also needs to think about the additional manpower and resources that will be needed.
Remote monitoring software prices have dropped considerable over the years as technology has become more affordable. Some basic software can be found online for free, while other advanced programs can be quite expensive. Outsourcing to an online service gives you freedom from worrying about purchasing the programs, software licenses, or upgrades.
You will also have to consider how in depth you want the monitoring to be. Basic monitoring programs keep lists of what websites your employees viewed without much additional data. More advanced programs can capture detailed information about their internet activities, such as how much time was spent on each website or what was downloaded or uploaded to and from the website. Other programs even log employee keystrokes, capture emails, and can even record voice.
They will also have to determine what kind of techniques they want to use to monitor the data. Online services offer the ability to have data monitored from remote locations. The benefit of this is that more people from a monitoring company can filter through much more data for a lower cost than on-site monitoring office. On the other hand, this may expose the confidential data of your company to the outside world. In house defeat this negative aspect, but are much more expensive.
Regardless of what type of service an employer ultimately chooses, they have the legal responsibility to inform their employees that their activities are being monitored. In many places, not making your employees aware of this constitutes illegal search and seizure and employers can be sued, fined, and even imprisoned. Having employees sign a legal document stating that they consent to monitoring is a simple way of informing them of monitoring without violating their rights.
Using a desktop remote monitoring service is a highly effective way of increasing productivity. It allows employers the ability to keep tabs of their employees while they are working at computers throughout the work center. In most cases, the cost of these services is offset by the amount of profits that can be regained by the increase in productivity.