As more businesses embrace the digital age and grant access 
to the internet and other technologies to employees, it is 
increasingly likely that employees can take actions which not
only cost the company money but can cause legal quagmires
as well. One option is the use of so-called "spy-ware" which
allows employers to track the destinations of web browsing 
or to whom employees call. It is also possible to make use of
more traditional surveillance techniques such as video cameras
and audio recording to catch employees in the act. It should
be noted, however, that surveillance laws vary from state to 
state so be sure to check with a qualified attorney before
implementing any given measure.

Audio and visual surveillance are best applied to catching an
employee engaged in a physically illegal act or some type of
act where one employee is trying to convince another to
engage in illegal activity. Standard surveillance cameras
easily secure storage spaces and hallways but what can be done
about activity in a cubicle or office? Many employers are now
installing cheap webcams on employees' desks. These cameras
take a picture every few seconds which are then available for
a manager or other security personnel to monitor vi the
corporate network. Combined with a microphone, they have a 
double benefit in making live video conferencing easier since 
multiple employees can use the cameras to talk to each other 
over the network.

Now that the physical area is secured, how can employers
prevent people from abusing their internet access at work?
Tracking where employees go on the internet is as simple as
installing a web-proxy. A web-proxy is a device which will take
requests for web pages, record whom asked for what page,
fetch the requested page and then send it back to the user.
These proxies can be combined with another type of proxy which
will filter out various pages which have been deemed
unacceptable. As for email, it's possible to setup the server
to only allow mail to be passed inside the company or to
ignore all incoming email. Most mail servers will, by default,
keep a detailed log which shows information about every
message sent through it.

There exists other software and hardware designed to help
augment and verify the data gathered by the aforementioned 
techniques. It is possible to record every keystroke typed 
on a keyboard or even to allow someone to watch an employee's 
screen from another computer. Hardware which checks a user's 
biometrics is becoming more available. Biometrics are physical 
attributes which can be used to identify individual people such 
as a fingerprint or retinal scan. This hardware ensures that the
person accessing the system is indeed whom they claim to be
so that it's not as easy for someone to impersonate another
employee by simply accessing the other person's account with a 
password.

Plenty of new devices and techniques are on the horizon
which will make it easier for employers to keep tabs on their
employees. With new technologies becoming available to
employees every day, it is important to be able to combat the
possible illegal use of those technologies. However, it is
important to consider that an employer can very quickly cross
the line of passively ensuring proper use of company equipment
and end up invading every facet of an employee's workday easily
as new methods become available so the use of such devices
must be carefully considered before implementing them.


This article is Copyright 2001, Ken Witherow. All rights reserved.
For questions or comments, email phantoml@rochester.rr.com