In Business World Computer Monitoring Software: What do you think a company values the most? Amongst its many assets, data is one critical component that must be safeguarded. From intellectual property and financial records to customer databases and trade secrets, this sensitive information is the lifeblood of any modern business.
That is why organizations must rightly invest heavily in robust firewalls, antivirus software, and other perimeter defenses to prevent external threats from entering. What about internal threats? They are an even more insidious and costly risk, lurking within the organizational boundary.
Irrespective of the type of risky insider action, they are often the cause of data breaches. According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report in 2023, internal actions are involved in nearly 20% of all data breaches. This stark figure necessitates an immediate shift in security strategy. This is where implementing employee computer monitoring software can transition from a debatable concept to a critical component of an all-around cybersecurity infrastructure.
Table of Contents
Understanding the Spectrum of Insider Threats
To efficiently and effectively defend against insider risks, you first need to be able to recognize the different categories of risks. This type of security risk falls under three main actors:
- The malicious insider: An unsatisfied or frustrated employee or one planning to leave the company who intentionally steals or destroys data for personal motives, competitive advantage, or revenge.
- The careless insider: These are primarily negligent employees who are vulnerable and, for convenience, often end up bypassing security protocols, falling for phishing scams, using weak passwords, or mishandling sensitive information.
- The compromised insider: These are employees compromised by external attackers through the hijacking of credentials or devices, turning their legitimate access into a route for data exfiltration.
These risky scenarios can be avoided through a comprehensive strategy using employee computer monitoring software.
How Monitoring Software Secures your Digital Infrastructure
To reshape your organizational digital infrastructure with secure monitoring, you must also ensure that it doesn’t harm the rights of the company and its employees in any way. It must have the ability to protect in all essential aspects, be it privacy, performance, or security. So, here’s how it functions as your first line of defense:
Proactive Detection of Suspicious Activity
Unlike former reactive strategies, modern monitoring software, like Insightful.io, does not wait for the event to occur. They work and monitor in real-time, analyzing behavioral patterns to establish a baseline for each user.
When an activity deviates significantly from the pre-set standard, such as an employee accessing thousands of files outside of the assigned role and needs, transferring massive amounts of data to an external source late at night, or attempting to bypass security controls, the system triggers an immediate alert. This instant notification enables the IT teams to investigate potential threats and determine their category to design a solution.
Protection of Intellectual Property (IP)
IP is a primary competitive advantage for most businesses. The monitoring tool helps protect the company’s IP by tracking access to sensitive files and folders. It logs whenever IP-related documents are viewed, copied, modified, or transferred. For example, if a member of the marketing department suddenly attempts to access source code repositories, the system will immediately flag the activity. This prompt insight helps efficient investigation of leaks and deters potential data theft.
Ensuring Regulatory Compliance (GDPR, HIPAA, etc.)
Data privacy regulations, including the GDPR and HIPAA, impose strict requirements on the handling of personal data, which vary depending on the business’s operating jurisdiction. Non-compliance with these legal frameworks at any time can result in astronomical fines and reputational damage.
However, monitoring solutions often come with built-in compliance formats, allowing an audit trail that demonstrates due diligence. It is transparent about who accessed what data, when, and for how long. This visibility is helpful during audits and in identifying risky records and individuals, in case an incident were to occur.
Implementing Monitoring with Transparency
You may implement the employee computer monitoring software most thoughtfully and effectively, but if the employees do not trust the system, it will be in vain. Moreover, deploying monitoring tools discreetly will also question the ethicality of the business and harm the well-earned trust, destroying employees’ morale and overall company culture. Here, the key to success is trust and transparency.
- Clear communication: Before you fully roll out the system, clearly inform the workforce about the why, what, and how of the monitoring program. Be transparent about long-term organizational goals to safeguard company assets, employee jobs, and data from security threats. Ensure that it won’t lead to productivity micromanagement.
- Create a formal monitoring policy: Design a comprehensive Acceptable Use Policy, clearly outlining what monitoring will take place, the business reasons for it, and how the data will be used, stored, and protected. Then, ensure to obtain employees’ acknowledgment and agreement to this policy.
- Focus on aggregate behavior, not individuals: Configure the monitoring to analyze aggregate patterns and detect anomalies that indicate risk, instead of using it as a tool to spy on individual activity. This approach would reduce the perception of personal intrusion.
Choosing the Right Tool
Every monitoring tool in the market presents some distinctive features. Hence, when selecting a solution that best works for your business, especially for security aspects, ensure that it offers:
- Strong data loss prevention (DLP) features: It’s the ability to block or flag unwarranted attempts to transfer data via non-permitted channels (email, cloud storage, USB devices).
- User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA): This is an advanced AI feature that analyzes standard user behavior patterns to detect subtle, yet high-risk anomalies that rule-based systems might have missed.
- Comprehensive auditing and reporting: Enabling this feature allows for easy generation of reports for security audits and incident investigations.
- Privacy controls: These enable privacy-sensitive monitoring, such as blurring screenshots or excluding certain websites and applications from tracking.
To Wrap Up
In this age of relentless cybersecurity challenges, organizations must not ignore likely insider threats; otherwise, the outcome would be catastrophic. That is why you should consider employee computer monitoring software as a fundamental necessity rather than a choice.
By implementing a reputable and suitable monitoring platform, you can foster a culture of trust in your workplace, transforming this tool into a reliable first line of defense to protect the company’s assets.