You can achieve business goals without wasting time and resources through a User Activity Monitor (UAM). The tool helps you log, track, record, and analyze activities in your organization so you are better-positioned to simplify business processes and increase results.
An efficient activity monitor lets you monitor the user’s activities without spending lots of money on surveillance or disrupting the normal workflow. Ideally, it should be able to log keystrokes, track web browsing and searching, record uploaded and downloaded files, monitor kernels, inspect network packets, capture screenshots and make video recordings of sessions.
Benefits of Acquiring a UAM Tool
A UAM Tool will overall increase the security, legal compliance, and employee productivity at your organization. The following are areas addressed by an efficient activity monitor:
Increased cyber security
Activities that are considered high risk and can lead to cyber-attacks include opening files and attachments from unknown sources, copying files to external drives, and using cloud storage to share corporate files. A good UAM tool can help to secure your networks more effectively.
Passive attackers can access your network and steal information without changing the data, while active attackers steal and modify it by deleting or encrypting it. The following are the common attacks to a network:
Access to a network without permission can happen due to a lack of protection against social engineering, insider threats, weak passwords, and accounts that were previously compromised.
Distributed denial of service
Attackers usually create large fleets of uncompromised devices. These fleets are a means to direct fake traffic to your network. For example, they can send batches of SYN/ACC packets that will overwhelm your network and break it down, giving them access.
Man in the middle attacks
These intercept traffic as it moves between your network and other sites. If security is not tight, they will steal data that is being transmitted, steal the user’s credentials then hijack their sessions.
Your network’s usability and integrity are protected by an activity monitor through implementing layers of defense on each network to protect your proprietary information. Both the hardware and software technologies are protected.
Legal compliance
Industries that are highly regulated such as financial and healthcare services have guidelines in place as to what information can be shared and with who.
Complying means that policies and procedures are maintained and records are kept. Failing to comply with set regulations will lead to fines and damage to the company’s reputation.
Having an activity monitor in place will ensure that no sensitive information is tampered with. The tool will ensure that:
- Audit trails track what changes were made and by who
- No unauthorized files are transferred
- Files that are not encrypted are not carelessly handled
If an employee is participating in gambling or any other activity that is against the law, your UAM tool will provide session recordings in real-time and comprehensive forensic data that will be used to take action against the employee. An activity monitor will help you remain legally compliant.
Increased employee productivity
Employees who know they are being monitored naturally stop spending time on unproductive activities. Use the feedback from the monitor to help them improve even more in their areas of difficulty.
Ways in Which UAM Tools Track User Activity
Keystroke logging
With this feature, you can easily capture a user’s keyboard activity by recording every keystroke they enter into the computer. It provides a complete log of search queries, usernames, emails, password instant messages, and other key sequences typed in.
Network packet inspection
A method of inspecting data packet contents as they pass a network checkpoint to find the destination Internet Protocol (IP). It provides an all-around view of data and metadata, enabling you to know which sites the user has visited.
Kernel monitoring
This feature enables you to access an organization’s hardware resources, keep track of all employee desktop activities, and track their activity even when working remotely. It can record activity even while offline.
These methods will give you a clear report of what they do on their computers. You can then take measures like blocking some websites or setting alarms that will be triggered, issuing a notification to get back to work anytime someone wanders off to an unproductive activity.
Are You Taking Advantage of Activity Monitors To Increase Business Efficiency?
Efficiency is an important aspect of running a business. An efficient user activity monitor will help you run your business processes smoothly by ensuring that you are safe from cyber-attacks knowingly or unknowingly through your employees. Besides, the tool ensures that you comply with regulations by protecting sensitive information from being tampered with. Finally, you can easily track your employees’ productivity and know what changes to take in effect.
