Employee Monitoring

CWmike writes "Michael Workman, an associate professor at the Florida Institute of Technology's Nathan M. Bisk College of Business, estimates that monitoring responsibilities take up at least 20% of the average IT manager's time. Yet most IT professionals never expected they'd be asked to police their colleagues and co-workers in quite this way. How do they feel about this growing responsibility? Workman says he sees a split among tech workers. Those who specialize in security issues feel that it's a valid part of IT's job. But those who have more of a generalist's role, such as network administrators, often don't like it. Computerworld contributor Tam Harbert found a wide variety of viewpoints from IT managers, ranging from discomfort at having to 'babysit' employees to righteous beliefs about 'protecting the integrity of the system.'"

Comments

Re:Know when

[c0mpliant]

That's such a bad example. Any porn viewing in a company environment leaves the company open to all sorts of lawsuits from sexual harassment to violation of ethics laws. As an IT Security professional, I need to be acutely aware of the risks the company can expose itself to. As part of our computer usage policy, anyone getting internet access must agree to express conditions of using it, for example no file downloads, no porn, no webmail etc. We monitor usage in co-ordination with blocking software to ensure compliance with this policy to ensure the safety of not just the IT infrastructure but also the companies regulatory, compliance and law requirements

Re:Get the *real* security to do it.

[dkleinsc]

After becoming pals with the security guard at my building, the guard related to me a moment when she was watching the parking garage cam, and noticed that the director of marketing was busy going Lewinsky on a member (pun thoroughly intended) of the board of directors. Certainly it explained how she got the job, since skill in marketing clearly had nothing to do with it.

If you want to know what is actually going on in a company, the 3 groups of people you need access to are the admins (who can watch people's computer use), the security guards (who can watch people's physical activities), and the bookkeepers (who know where the money and therefor the power is going).