does IT spy on employees?

Question

do corporate IT deptments spy on employees?

Answer 1

As an IT consultant, I will tell my clients that they should have a computer use policy with enforcements in place to catch offenders. This will otherwise put a company at risk for a whole lot of things. The company must survive. Employees can be replaced.

Sorry, but its the truth.

Besides its their computers, network, applications, and employee. Nothing there belongs to you - even your personal email.

Answer 2

Yes they do and for a valid reason. Dissemination of sensitive company information can quickly destroy a company. Many people will (due to lack of training) give sensitive information to competitors.

Do not fool yourself into thinking all employees are loyal. This is one of the reasons employers do credit checks on potential and existing employees. An employee deep in debt will often sell sensitive information believing they are only doing what's needed to survive or support their families.

Computers (company computers on top of that) are the most common way of passing sensitive information to the competitors.

In many cases it is given away by employees not knowing they are doing it. A word or two can sometimes alert competitors to a new project. In many cases this employee can be "tricked" into giving away additional information.

Employees using company time and computers for personal use is also a major problem. Many of these people think this lack of productivity costs the company very little. That might be true for a single company, and that person. When you mulitply it by many employees and many companies (nationwide) it is estimated to cost 100 billion dollars in lost productivity each year.

A small company with 8 employees, spending 1 hr each on personal business, will cost that company 1 day of production. It is easy to extropolate and see how a large corporation could loose 1 year worth of productivity everyday. Imagine having employees working 1 day per year and then getting paid for staying home the rest of the year. This is the effect of lost productivity on a company.

For those that don't understand how much 1 Billion dollars is: If you spend $1000 a day, each and everyday, it would take you 2yrs 7 mo. to spend 1 Million dollar. Spending the same amount daily will take you 2,700 years ot spend 1 billion.

Answer 3

It's not really spying so much as regulation. Some companies have IT go through employee communications for the sake of making sure everyone is following the rules. All it takes is one stupid person opening an unfamiliar attachment to let a virus loose through the company's network.

Plus, it isn't spying because the company usual will tell you that any communications used with company equipment is NOT private at all.

Other companies just don't care, and they don't monitor it even if they have rules in place.

Answer 4

Depends on what you mean by spy.
Corporate IT monitors corporate network traffic.
It has to because of legal implications.
If an employee sends information across that network,
it's monitored.
If an employee logs into a corporate network from outside of the office,
they are still part of the corporate network, and therefore monitored.
Corporate IT , as a general rule, do not monitor anything outside of their network.
Not that they can't, but 99.9% of the time they don't.

Answer 5

They can and some do. I would like to believe that most companies would not spy unless they had reason to suspect the employee but who knows! They can read all of your emails and know every link you've ever clicked. My advice, if you wouldn't want it posted on the wall of the break room, don't put it in an email.

Answer 6

They certainly can if they want. They can also do that with cell phones. A company phone can be tracked, and see who you're calling during non-work hours. If they want to see the sites that you're visiting, or what you're doing. They very well can.

Not hard at all.

Answer 7

Probably.

Answer 8

They can. And sometimes do.