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Guide

iS it SPyinG or JuSt Good manaGement?

According to a 2007 survey by American Management Most operate on wireless networks, but they are readily
Association, 66 percent of employers monitor employees’ installed to work on wired networks as well. Packet sniff-
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Internet connections. They also monitor email (43 per- ers obtain the text of unsecured email (most email), text
cent), keystrokes (45 percent), stored files (43 percent), blogs messages, and Internet sites visited. They also can ob-
(12 percent), and social networking sites (10 percent). That tain voice traffic processed over the Internet. Any traffic
survey is 8 years old, and it is likely that, if anything, employer that passes through an organization’s networks, whether
monitoring of employee activities has increased. A number of from your employer-provided device, your personal
different techniques are used: device, or your personal computer at home (if you’re us-
ing the corporate network), can be sniffed.
• Key loggers. A key logger is a program that records all of
your keystrokes. Employers can install key loggers without Your employer could also have video surveillance cam-
a problem on any corporate computer. If you allow your eras, audio recorders, office spies, and numerous other ways
employer to configure your personal mobile device as part of watching you, but let’s leave those aside.
of its BYOD policy, it can install a key logger on it as well. As you think about the amount of data that key log-
Key loggers do just what their name implies; they ging files, log files, and packet sniffing files contain, you may
record everything you key: user IDs, passwords, text mes- feel secure that out of the millions of messages sent and
sages, emails, documents, and so forth. They are agnos- received, your employer is unlikely to find your problematic
tic about what they record. If you check your personal ones. Text mining is the application of statistical techniques
banking account on an employer-owned computer, your on text streams for locating particular words or patterns
employer (and its IT personnel) has everything it needs to of particular words and even correlating word counts and
manage your banking account. If you write a love letter to patterns with personality profiles. The results can be used to
your spouse, the key logger will record it. find undesirable employees such as thieves, sexual predators,
• Log files. Computer systems
are indefatigable diarists. Your
employer-provided computer
or mobile device and any em-
ployer server that you connect
to with a personal device keep
extensive logs of your activ-
ity. Those logs show, in part,
when you start work, when
you end work, how long your
computer is idle at work, and
possibly, if the device has GPS,
where your device has been.
Logs also show what files you
process and much information
about your activities over the
employer-managed networks.
• Packet sniffers. A packet
sniffer is a program that
captures network traffic.
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