Deployment of Monitoring Technologies


There are pros and cons to making employees aware of the monitoring devices. One of the positives is saving employers money, because one can use less evasive devices, which are cheaper, and also avoid costly lawsuits from disgruntled employees. Additionally, if an employer is using the monitoring devices as a deterrent against certain activities, making employees aware of the monitoring program might work by preventing employees from engaging in prohibited activities.

But there are also reasons for not making employees aware of the monitoring devices. Making employees aware of the presence of monitoring technologies might make them so conscious that they will spend more time acting as they are expected to instead of doing productive work. They might also devote time to finding ways of circumventing these technologies or simply destroying them through tampering.

While monitoring devices are more difficult to conceal, software is a lot easier to hide. Let us look at a few positions of deployment of monitoring software ” at the server, on the client, and a hybrid of these two (Wallace, 2001). There are advantages and, of course, disadvantages to each method.

Server-Based Monitoring

Server-based monitoring software is broad-based, as it monitors employees network-wide. One of its advantages is that it covers everyone, so if there are any legal proceedings , there is evidence that no one employee was singled out. Its other advantage is that since it is far removed from the monitored employees, it cannot be tampered with easily as would be the client-based monitoring software. Also, server-based monitoring software is easy to upgrade since it is done once, instead of going over every client in the network.

Server-based monitoring software produces very good reports on all traffic into and out of the network. It gives the employer an early warning alert of the type of traffic that is coming into or going out of the network, and a remedy to the problem can be found early. This early warning system can give the employer enough time to find corrective measures to take against an employee and to protect the network as a whole.

Besides casting a wide net to catch and cover everyone, server-based monitoring systems can deploy more sophisticated solutions that cover a wide variety of items that cannot be covered by host-based monitoring software. It is possible to dedicate a server for monitoring if the network is big and the volume and numbers of monitored hosts and items desired are big. The bigger the number of monitored items and individuals, the more logs and screenshots that can be stored. This may require substantial memory and processing power.

Client-Based Monitoring

Although server-based monitoring software is more versatile and tamper-free, it misses some vital activities that take place at client hosts and do not register on the network. Activities like playing solitaire, creating files using a host-based application, and copying company data do not register on a network and can be carried out at a host without anybody else knowing. To prevent activities like these, an employer either needs to look over the shoulder of an employee in order to see, put recording cameras in place, or place host-based monitoring software on each host. There are several examples of client-based software that work like a host embedded camera, but the camera is controlled by the employer. Such software includes WebrootWinGuardian and WinWhatWhere. These and others in the same class record everything that a person on a host types, because they record all keystrokes whether later deleted or not, and they record screenshots. This type of logging is stored on the host and can be viewed by the employer at the host after hours or, if the computer is connected to a company network, can be configured to periodically e-mail the logs to a designated person. Although client-based monitoring is good for logging all user activity on the host, it is prone to tampering. Once a user learns of the presence of such software, one either finds ways to circumvent it or may try to remove it or disable it. Client-based monitoring also suffers from lack of storage space for large volumes of logs. And finally, as we will see shortly, it is easy for the user to find out if there is hidden monitoring software on the host.

Client/Server Monitoring

As we noticed above, both server-based and client-based monitoring software have their own advantages and disadvantages; a hybrid solution brings into play a way to use the best parts of each. For example, software on the market that fills this gap works by creating daemons, also known as program agents , and placing them on the client. The job of the daemons is to gather vital data on the client and report to the server. It is the server that makes the loggings and the reports. The daemons are good because they are not always resident on the client, and they do not store logs on the client; therefore, they cannot be detected easily. Their other advantages include their ability to see small undetectable user activities on the client that a fully server-based software would not be able to see . One of these hybrid programs is Wards Creek GameWarden.




Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace. Controversies and Solutions
Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace: Controversies and Solutions
ISBN: 1591404568
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 161

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