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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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JULY 22, 2003
Ever-Sharper Eyes Watch You Work Corporate monitoring of employees' e-mail, Web surfing, or behavior in general is getting more sophisticated -- and widespread On July 10, Jeanne Phillips, who writes the syndicated newspaper column Dear Abby, printed a letter from a staffer in an unnamed corporate technology department who, while monitoring his company's systems, has seen the savings-account balances of fellow employees, tracked their bids on auction site eBay, and noted which Web sites they frequent. He has also read their e-mail, which ranged from mundane to entertaining to graphic, complete with descriptions of the sender's personal dimensions. "I will never look at certain employees the same way again," he wrote. Most corporations have recorded their employees' phone calls and e-mail, and videotaped their movements for years. A recent survey by theAmerican Management Assn. (AMA) found that 52% of 1,100 respondents believed their employers monitor e-mail, up from 47% in 2001. The actual number could be higher, since 13% of the people surveyed didn't know whether they were being watched or not. Most likely, they are: Companies today are gathering more and more data on their internal processes and the people who manage them -- thanks, in part, to new government regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. That law, which will take effect next summer, will require publicly traded companies to keep track of which employees have looked at sensitive documents, for example -- all in the name of helping ensure the accuracy of financial reporting. NOT "OUT HUNTING"? In addition, Corporate America is becoming increasingly aware of the huge threat wayward employees represent. About 70% of attacks on corporate computer systems come from the inside, according to e-Security, a Vienna (Va.) supplier of corporate security systems. This can be something as simple as a disgruntled travel-agency employee canceling dozens of client tickets or an alienated marketing manager erasing valuable customer data. The costs of such mischief, while often unreported, tend to exceed losses from external attacks -- which ran to $202 million at 500 companies surveyed this spring by the FBI and the Computer Security Institute in Southampton, Pa., an association of technology professionals. The good news for employees is that as the amount of information collected snowballs to unmanageable levels, many corporations are starting to look for alternative methods of surveillance. After the layoffs of the past two years, most info-tech departments are spread too thin as it is. Plus, most companies "don't feel that [snooping] is warranted," says Robert Richardson, editorial director at the Computer Security Institute. "Most places don't go out hunting." Instead, many companies are turning to more effective -- and less obtrusive -- ways of uncovering internal threats: statistical analysis, employee surveys, and software that guards sensitive documents and systems. Privately held Boston startup Verdasys has developed software that guards closely held information, such as customer data. The product, which is due to start beta-testing in August, keeps a journal of people who look at a file. SCREEN-SAVER DEFENSE. It also reports if a person prints out the information or burns it onto a CD. "Our customers want to move on to security activities that have more of a direct impact on their business" than sifting through all workers' correspondence, says Vedasys CEO Seth Birnbaum. "I see customers becoming more practical." Another approach is to control access to an organization's information systems. e-Security sells software that makes sure all corporate computers have a password-protected screen saver enabled. The screen saver turns on whenever the PC stays idle for 20 minutes, and that helps protect the system from unauthorized access during lunch hours and on weekends. "Most organizations care about their assets and aren't looking to track their employees' behavior," says Joseph Payne, president and CEO of e-Security. In fact, employee behavior can be now tracked with statistical-analysis software without invading privacy unnecessarily. Privately held startupStone Analytics in San Diego uses such analysis to detect unusual patterns in data collected from e-mail systems and Web logs, among other applications. Such patterns could raise a red flag -- leading to further investigation -- if, say an employee were to blast 10,000 e-mail messages from a company account or try to log into the system with the wrong password 100 times in one day, explains CEO Christy Joiner-Congleton. SEE AND TELL. The product, which is already used by the government and by private clients, helps identify problems before they occur, says Paul Proctor, vice-president for security and risk strategies for IT consultancy Meta Group. "We view this as the next evolution of monitoring," he adds. Some of the methods being used even rely on employees to divulge what they see around them. Every week, privately held eePulse in Ann Arbor, Mich., sends out two to three questions, plus space for comments, to 30,000 to 40,000 employees at clients such as General Motors (GM ). It then aggregates the anonymous answers for its clients' middle managers to peruse. Employees complain of everything from dirty bathrooms to a co-worker who brings a gun to work. Then their managers, who receive the results of these anonymous surveys, have to provide upper-level execs and the employees with a list of actions that rectify the problem, explains eePulse CEO Theresa Welbourne, a human resources professor who bases the surveys on 17 years of her own research.
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