How To Prevent Employee Data Theft: Software to Monitor Employees

How To Prevent Employee Data Theft

What if you have few disloyal, disgruntled employees in your organisation? How can you stop them from misusing sensitive information?

Here’s how to prevent employees from stealing data.

Usually techniques such as sending attachments by emails & messengers, or using steganography may not be that fruitful to a disgruntled employee, simply because most companies monitor outgoing mails, don’t allow messengers, and some even employ Steganalysis to scan files.

They could use Digital Cameras, Mobile Phones, and Dumpster Diving to steal sensitive data, so the the organization needs to have a policy in place to deal with these things.

These security solutions would help an organization to prevent data theft by staff.

• Monitor outgoing traffic.
• Use firewalls, filtering mechanisms
• Scan and analyze all outgoing email attachments (use steganalysis)
• Restricted movement of Digital Cameras and Cellphones in sensitive areas of the office
• Implement Proper disposal strategies to prevent Dumpster Diving

Keylogger Software To Monitor Employees: Pros & Cons, things to watch out for.

Overview

Used by several parents to keep a tab on the activities of their children, these software are also widely used to monitor the activities of employees, especially by companies that lack a controlled environment.

If you are a small business with just few employees, you should always lookout for cost-effective solutions that can boost the productivity and also provide security.

A Keylogger can be a good tool to track how your employees have been spending their time on the computer.

What Do they Record?

Basically, it can record everything that gets typed on the computer’s keyboard.

So it can track chat conversations, messages, emails, keystrokes and website visits. Some will even take screenshots or use a webcam to take secret photos or video footage.

You can read more here for their features.

What Should You Choose?

You need to to take into account a couple of factors before using these.

• Are you going to face any legal action because of privacy infringement?
• Is it going to make the employees feel resentful?

But having said that, employers do have the right to ensure that no employee is misusing the company’s resources / assets (most employees are actually happy to comply).

Publishing List of Restricted Activities

It is a good idea to provide employees with a list of computer “offenses” which will be flagged by the monitoring system.

Some obvious ones would include visiting pornography sites, sending out project-related / sensitive information, job searching, and so on.

By publishing a list, you ensure that there’s no ambiguity between you and your staff, and the guidelines are understood by everyone.