Security Advisor

Employee Social Network Monitoring On the Rise

Let's double up on the industry analysis. Although this one doesn't look like it was sponsored by Microsoft.

According to Gartner, IT's monitoring of those using Facebook and other social networking sites is posed to skyrocket.

It found that currently 10 percent of enterprises like to see what its employees did over the weekend. That number is projected to increase by 60 percent by 2015, thanks to the explosion of monitoring software in the market.

"The growth in monitoring employee behavior in digital environments is increasingly enabled by new technology and services," said Andrew Walls, research vice president of Gartner. "Surveillance of individuals, however, can both mitigate and create risk, which must be managed carefully to comply with ethical and legal standards."

Enterprises must balance using said technology to stop the loss of time and money that could be caused by increased security risks and loss of productivity, while at the same time making sure it's not pissing off its employees by creating an Orwellian work environment.

What are your thoughts on social networking monitoring? And what is the solution for balancing security and privacy? Let me know at [email protected].

About the Author

Chris Paoli (@ChrisPaoli5) is the associate editor for Converge360.

Featured

comments powered by Disqus

Subscribe on YouTube