Big Brother at the Office: Friend or Foe?

There are many aspects of employee monitoring that must be taken into account before determining if it is right for your organization. This paper outlines most of the issues and attempts to present an objective presentation of the information from both the employee and employer's perspectives. You will have to evaluate all of the available resources, weigh the benefits versus the disadvantages of monitoring and determine if it is right for your organization. While monitoring is often times directed or led by the human resources departments of many organizations, network and security administrators generally carry out the orders. Security professionals can gain from monitoring by some of the possible benefits including: prevention of data theft and the reduction in the risk associated with employees visiting 'hacker', 'warez' and other questionable content websites.