According to leading IT consultants NetCare, sales of monitoring software increase as regional bosses check staff Internet use in battle against lost productivity, abuse and theft. “If you think someone is reading your emails or tracking your Internet use, you could be right,” said a leading regional information technology expert. “More and more companies anxious about lost productivity, inappropriate activity by their staff or just plain theft are monitoring what their employees are up to on their terminals,” said Balakrishnan Balasubramanian, general manager of Dubai-based Netcare System Services, the regional distributors of Spector 360 monitoring software. “This is a relatively new phenomenon in the Middle East but we are seeing an increasing interest in the region in line with much of the rest of the world,” he added. “For example, a survey in the US recently found that three-quarters of employers monitored their employees' website visits in order to prevent inappropriate surfing and 65 percent used software to block connections to websites deemed off limits.” The same survey found about a third tracked keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard. Just over half review and retain email messages. Most importantly, 80 percent of employers disclose their monitoring practices to employees and most had established policies governing personal Internet use, including email. The companies are using monitoring and surveillance software products to uncover Internet abuse, lost productivity, leaking of confidential information and other inappropriate activities by employees that expose companies to financial, legal and preventable risks. “Our company has introduced to the Middle East a software application that is one of the most advanced employee monitoring and filtering tools available today and we are installing it for a growing number of our clients in the region,” Balasubramanian added. Called Spector 360, it gives companies the power to monitor computer and Internet usage across their entire organization day and night, 365 days a year - whether they are in the office, traveling or working remotely. __
