Employee monitoring software
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Employee monitoring software is a means of
employee monitoring Employee monitoring is the (often automated) surveillance of workers' activity. Organizations engage in employee monitoring for different reasons such as to track performance, to avoid legal liability, to protect trade secrets, and to address other ...
, and allows company administrators to monitor and supervise all their employee computers from a central location. It is normally deployed over a
business network A business network is a complex network of companies, working together to accomplish certain objectives. These objectives, which are strategic and operational, are adopted by business networks based on their role in the market. There are two categ ...
and allows for easy centralized log viewing via one central networked PC. Sometimes, companies opt to monitor their employees using
remote desktop software In computing, the term remote desktop refers to a software- or operating system feature that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely off of one system (usually a PC, but the concept applies equally to a server or a ...
instead.


Purpose

Employee monitoring software is used to supervise employees' performance, prevent illegal activities, avoid confidential info leakage, and catch insider threats. Nowadays employee monitoring software is widely used in technology companies.


Features

An employee monitoring program can monitor almost everything on a computer, such as keystrokes and passwords inputted, websites visited, chats in Facebook Messenger, Skype and other social chats. A piece of monitoring software can also capture screenshots of mobile activities. E-mail monitoring includes employers having access to records of employee’s e-mails that are sent through the company’s servers. Companies may use keyword searches to natural language processing to analyze e-mails. The administrator can view the logs through a cloud panel, or receive the logs by email.


Criticism

Bossware, also known as tattleware, is
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
that allows supervisors to automatically monitor the productivity of their employees. Common features of bossware include activity monitoring, screenshotting and/or
screen recording A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture or a screen recording, often containing audio narration. The term ''screencast'' compares with the related term ''screenshot''; whereas screenshot ...
,
keystroke logging Keystroke logging, often referred to as keylogging or keyboard capturing, is the action of recording (logging) the keys struck on a keyboard, typically covertly, so that a person using the keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitored ...
,
webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripheral d ...
and/or
microphone A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public ...
activation, and "invisible" monitoring. Bossware has been called a form of
spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is software with malicious behaviour that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their privac ...
. During the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, the use of bossware by companies to monitor their employees increased. The
Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...
(EFF) denounced bossware as a
violation of privacy The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions that intends to restrain governmental and private actions that threaten the privacy of individuals. Over 150 national constitutions mention the right to privacy. On 10 December 19 ...
. The
Center for Democracy and Technology Centre for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation that advocates for digital rights and freedom of expression. CDT seeks to promote legislation that enables individuals to use the internet for pu ...
(CDT) denounced bossware as a threat to the safety and health of employees. During the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, members of the
r/antiwork r/antiwork is a subreddit associated with contemporary labor movements, critique of work, and the anti-work movement. The forum's slogan reads: "Unemployment for all, not just the rich!" Posts on the forum commonly describe employees' negative e ...
subreddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...
shared various
mouse jiggler A mouse jiggler is a software used to simulate the movement of a computer mouse. It can also be a mechanical device moving the physical computer mouse. In all cases, it prevents sleep mode, standby mode or the screensaver from activating. Mouse ji ...
strategies to combat bossware intended to monitor the productivity of
remote work Remote work, also called work from home (WFH), work from anywhere, telework, remote job, mobile work, and distance work is an employment arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work, such as an office building, ware ...
ers. A study by Reports and Data predicts that the global market for employee remote monitoring software will hit $1.3 billion by 2027.


See also

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Computer surveillance Computer and network surveillance is the monitoring of computer activity and data stored locally on a computer or data being transferred over computer networks such as the Internet. This monitoring is often carried out covertly and may be comple ...
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Computer surveillance in the workplace Computer surveillance in the workplace is the use of computers to monitor activity in a workplace. Computer monitoring is a method of collecting performance data which employers obtain through digitalised employee monitoring. Computer surveillance ...
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Job satisfaction Job satisfaction, employee satisfaction or work satisfaction is a measure of workers' contentedness with their job, whether they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision. Job satisfaction can be ...
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Malware Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depri ...
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Spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is software with malicious behaviour that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their privac ...
*
Trojan horse The Trojan Horse was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Trojan Horse is not mentioned in Homer's ''Iliad'', with the poem ending before the war is concluded, ...
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User activity monitoring In the field of information security, user activity monitoring (UAM) is the monitoring and recording of user actions. UAM captures user actions, including the use of applications, windows opened, system commands executed, checkboxes clicked, text e ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Employee Monitoring Software Business software Computer security software Computer surveillance Labor Spyware Deception Espionage devices Espionage techniques