Watching your workers

The number of companies that monitor their employees' computer use and Internet access is on the rise. As one indication, the market for corporate Internet access control products is expected to grow from $31 million in 1998 to $260 million by 2003, according to a report from IDC in Framingham, Mass.

It's easy to see why. What other strategy holds the possibility of increasing productivity, conserving bandwidth and protecting companies from lawsuits? "Somewhere on the order of 50% of companies at least monitor employees in terms of Internet use," says Chris Christiansen, the IDC analyst who authored the 1998 report. "They don't necessarily filter or block, but they do actively watch what sites people are going to."

Additional issues must be considered before tackling the problem. Which tools are right for your company? How do you approach the delicate issue of snooping on employees? And what should you do with violators?

Two companies' experiences are described below.

Law firm reduces liability

When the Milwaukee Davis and Kuelthau law firm upgraded its IT infrastructure two years ago, the partners decided to begin monitoring employees' Internet use.

As a firm that specializes in labor and employment law, it was particularly sensitive to the potential liability that it faced if a worker downloaded pornography and then exposed other employees to it.

The company boosted its Internet connection from a partial T-1 to a full T-1. At the same time, it purchased Elron Software's CommandView Internet Manager Internet monitoring and reporting software.

When choosing a tool, MISManager Brian Drier recommends taking a careful look at reporting capabilities. Internet Manager, for instance, has powerful reporting capabilities and lets him quickly develop a list of the 10 most frequent Internet users, which he reviews on a regular basis for signs of abuse.

But there is more to monitoring Internet use than buying software. Because the culture at Davis and Kuelthau is somewhat casual, Drier says the company tried to approach the issue gently. It kept employees well-informed about the project, explaining the new approach in training sessions and encouraging them to ask questions. The firm also decided to let employees surf the 'Net as much as they want before and after work, as long as it's not a drain on the network.

"In a more corporate environment, you might find people resisting it as a Big Brother directive," Drier says. "But it was for our employees' protection and our own. When we framed it that way it was a little easier to take."

Drier won't say if any employees have been disciplined, but says that so far only a handful have been found to be abusing their Internet privileges.

"We have not experienced the kinds of issues that a lot of organizations have," he says. "It's been too easy."

Manufacturer calls a halt to games

In 1997 Westlake Group, a petrochemical and plastic products maker, consolidated computer operations at its 16-building Lake Charles, La., campus onto one LAN and brought its IT workers into a single three-member department. With the improved communication that resulted, the IT staff soon realized a problem was afoot: too many games.

"We'd go out to work on a PC because of a complaint about there being no room on the hard drive," says John Windsor, IT area manager for the 500-plus employee campus. "When we'd go to look at what was filling the hard drives up, we were finding games."

Windsor turned to DVD Software's AntiGame, which can search a network and locate and delete thousands of games. Westlake signed up for a full implementation. "The cost was easy to justify," Windsor says. "It was somewhere between $600 and $1,000."

Now when users log on at the start of each day, AntiGame checks PCs for the presence of about 10,000 games. Westlake doesn't keep a log of where games are found; the main concern is to keep hard drives clean. But the company also didn't tell employees what it was doing, which led to some grumbling.

"In retrospect, that wasn't the best approach," Windsor says.

Westlake is now in the process of adopting Internet monitoring technology. Site-blocking software from Websense will be up and running on the firewall in Houston, through which all the company's Internet traffic flows. And last month, Windsor activated Surf Control's Scout, an Internet management tool.

"We're not going to use it as a tattletale," he says. "But it's there and available if we want it."

Duffy is a freelance writer in Haydenville, Mass. He can be reached at tduffy62@rcn.com.