Friday, October 15, 2010

Be Aware Of Your Workers With A Desktop Remote Monitoring Service

When left unsupervised, many employees who have desktop access to the internet spend hours each day surfing the web. They waste countless hours that could be devoted to working do everything but work. Because of this, your business may be loosing considerable amounts of profits due to lost productivity. But there is an effective way to get that productivity back up, and that is through a desktop remote monitoring service.

If your employees require access to the internet, you probably have already tried some different tools and methods to decrease the personal usage of the internet by employees. Unfortunately, many filtering programs are ineffective or are just a waste of money. Even if a filtering program works, oftentimes it not only blocks bad websites, but blocks websites that your employees need access to as well. And cutting internet services altogether is probably not an option either.

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.

The business owner will also have to decide on what they want to be monitored. This can range from simply monitoring what web pages are accessed and by who to detailed reports of how much time is spent on each web domain. Some advanced programs can even monitor keystrokes and all email traffic for employers to monitor the security of their network.

There are two primary ways that data is remotely monitored. The most secure method is to have computer personnel monitor the information directly from the network. This prevents the data they monitor from being leaked to the internet. However, this would require that you hire employees who are skilled and may be too costly. On the other hand, outsourcing to an online monitoring service is much more economical, but all of the data is at risk to being intercepted by potential adversaries to your company.

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.

Desktop remote monitoring services are an excellent way to increase productivity and ultimately profitability. Keeping track of employee productiveness is already difficult, but remote monitoring makes it a little easier. And the increased profits may even pay for the monitoring services.

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