User Activity Monitoring: How It Works, Benefits, Best Practices?

If you run a business, you know how difficult it can be to manage staff. Some employees feel like they will not do their jobs, and still, get paid. 

Internal control is vital to the success of your business. If you’re sitting next to an employee, you can’t let them relax. Employee tracking software can provide the same level of control, whether it’s a large organization or small. 

User activity monitoring (UAM) monitors and tracks user activity and various actions on computers, equipment, and other company assets. UAM solutions require effective monitoring, detection, and alerting when a suspicious or problematic event occurs. 

How does the user activity monitor work?

The primary goal of monitoring user activity is to ensure that users handle data responsibly and reduce the risk of data breaks. Some UAM solutions monitor user activity related to systems, data, applications, web browsing, file and folder access, etc.

Monitoring of user behavior depends entirely on business objectives and desired outcomes. For example, if you are concerned about what users do during a session, a UAM solution that can record sessions are helpful. 

If you want to ensure that users are not trying to access or modify critical files and folders, a staff monitoring software can be helpful to monitor file/folder access, how does this employee or user activity monitoring tool work? 

• Remote Desktop Screenshots: You User monitors activity on the device by taking screenshots from the remote workstation.
• Real-time user activity monitoring: it allows you to monitor what is happening on your computer in real-time. All data can be tracked and evaluated.
• User activity report: All user activity is included in the user activity report.
• Block malicious websites: This feature allows you to limit access to unnecessary or annoying websites. Companies often choose to block social networking sites, gaming portals, entertainment, and streaming sites.
• Productivity tracking: This feature allows you to monitor the productivity levels of each employee. By tracking productivity, you can improve areas where employees are struggling and improve the company as a whole.
• Activity-based alerts: They are triggered when predefined conditions occur for an activity. These alerts draw immediate attention to the undesirable activity.
• Keystroke logging: it is a feature that records keyboard activity. Keystrokes are recorded and stored in a log file. The keystroke logging feature records all operations performed on the keyboard.

Best practice for Real-time user activity monitoring

Monitoring user behavior is an important way to protect against cybersecurity threats such as information leaks. Many IT security teams are unaware of how users access and use sensitive data, leaving them vulnerable to system access by internal threats and external attacks. Best practices for monitoring user behavior include the following.

• Organizations can secretly monitor user behavior, but this typically requires employees to use company computers. This type of surveillance is an excellent way to detect insider threats and lurkers in the workplace.
• Implement a privacy policy. A privacy policy should define the permitted uses of data transfer and processing, including file sharing, handling of sensitive information, and permit applications.
• Maintain forensic logs. Forensic logs that track users should include visual evidence of malicious activity or specific behaviors. User activity monitoring solutions collect data at any point in the monitoring process and provide visual evidence for security analysis.

When high-risk behavior occurs, such as taking sensitive customer data, the security team must be able to assess the severity of the behavior. This way, you can focus attention on users who pose a high risk to the organization.

Monitoring user behavior is the most important aspect of data protection for organizations today. Rather than relying on other solutions, it makes sense to invest in software that ideally combines data protection and user activity monitoring.

What are the benefits of monitoring user behavior?

If you are still hesitant, it is important that you recognize the benefits of user activity monitoring with this software. Some of these benefits are

• Increased productivity
• Detecting threats from within
• Verification of compliance with laws and regulations
• Preserve evidence in workplace investigations

Improved productivity

Every employee has different strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, it is important to recognize them and give them jobs that complement their talents. By assigning the right task to the right person, you can increase employee and company productivity.

By monitoring employees, you can find out who is better at certain tasks than others. For example, if several team members are performing similar tasks, managers can monitor their behavior logs to determine which person is best at managing the workflow.

Security issues

One of the main reasons companies monitor user behavior is to ensure network security. UAM tools can help in various things such as,

• secure networks and devices
• Reduce the risk of data leakage
• Protect exclusive information and trade secrets 
• Prevent data loss. 

With UAM tools, you can monitor these security threats in real-time and can audit trails, allowing IT and security departments to respond quickly.

Ensure regulatory compliance

Many companies must comply with federal laws and regulations such as HIPAA, PCI DSS and FACTA. Failure to comply with these laws can result in particularly high fines. To avoid these penalties, you can use EMS software to ensure that employees are complying with all laws and regulations.

It can also be used to verify that employees are complying with company regulations. For example, many companies have internal policies that prohibit employees from accessing certain websites on company-owned devices. Companies with such policies may want to use the software to ensure that their employees comply with this rule.

Save time and resources

How do you know what your team members are doing?

More importantly, how do you know what your employees are doing outside the company? More and more companies are gearing up to use employee tracking tools to minimize the time spent dealing with this issue.

Moreover, keep in mind that idle or non-working time is a financial burden to the organization. User activity tracking software can help organizations save time and money by monitoring user activity and resource usage.

Bottom line

Monitoring user behavior is the most important aspect of data protection for organizations today. Rather than relying on other solutions, it makes sense to invest in software that ideally combines data protection and user activity monitoring features.

Author Bio

Sarah Noah Liam is a 28-year-old Software Management person who enjoys programming, Employee Monitoring software, and screen recording. She has a postgraduate degree in Computer science. She was raised in a happy family home with two loving parents.