Friday, October 15, 2010

Be Aware Of Your Staff Activities 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.

Your next choice may be a desktop remote monitoring service. With this type of service, professionals are able to monitor how much time your employees are devoting to being productive and how much time they are spending doing non-work related activities on the internet. Additionally, these services also monitor when your employees access websites that can be harmful to your network or if they are potentially leaking confidential data.

There are a wide variety of remote monitoring tools and software packages available. You will need to determine how much you want to spend on monitoring software, what you want it to monitor, and how you want the data to be monitored. Furthermore, monitoring internet usage is time consuming, so you may also need to consider hiring specialists or subscribing to a monitoring service.

As technology costs get lower, monitoring software and services also get cheaper. In fact, some basic software packages are free. Online services will provide the programs that you need without business owners having to invest in costly tools or worry about upgrades.

Next, you will need to determine the level of monitoring that you need. Basic programs simply keep lists of the websites that your employees accessed without providing much amplifying data. Advanced programs provide greater detail and usually include in-depth activity logs. Some programs even offer keystroke loggers and can capture emails for additional security.

They will also have to determine what kind of techniques they want to use to monitor the data. Online services offer the ability to have data monitored from remote locations. The benefit of this is that more people from a monitoring company can filter through much more data for a lower cost than on-site monitoring office. On the other hand, this may expose the confidential data of your company to the outside world. In house defeat this negative aspect, but are much more expensive.

No matter what software package of service that you ultimately choose, you have a legal obligation to inform your employees that you are monitoring their activities. Otherwise, you could be breaking the law and be punished with lawsuits, fines, or imprisonment. The most effective way to make them aware of the monitoring is to have your employees sign documentation that they acknowledge and consent to the monitoring.

A great way to increase productivity and profitability in a workplace that has internet access is through desktop monitoring services. They give business owners the ability to monitor internet usage without truly restricting access. And for some businesses, the increase in profits may even outweigh the costs of these services.

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