Most, 62 per cent of people would not be deterred from taking a job from a company that actively uses user activity monitoring, according to a survey by a security and fraud analytics provider. The company says this goes against the common view that employee monitoring is a deterrent and must be performed surreptitiously, to not bother employees. The survey by Gurucul was done at the three-day Infosecurity Europe 2019 exhibition, pictured, for cyber and information security at London Olympia in June.
Los Angeles-based Gurucul says workplace monitoring has often been viewed as a spying tactic, taken up by paranoid or nosey employers, to keep an eye on staff behaviour at work. However, monitoring employee behaviour at work is less about snooping on people’s internet browsing history and more about detecting potential threats to an organisation, the firm says.
Insider threats can be the biggest security problem for companies, tending to cause the most damage and being the hardest to detect, compared with attacks from the outside. Behavioural analytics can be used to detect anomalous activity in employee behaviour which may indicate a potential threat for an organisation, the firm suggests. By deploying user and entity behaviour analytics, companies can better protect themselves from cyber-attacks, it’s claimed.
Saryu Nayyar, CEO of Gurucul says: “The insider threat is a serious problem for organisations simply because it comes from within the business. Insiders know where sensitive company data is, who has access to it and, therefore, know exactly where to strike if they decide to take action. The fact that so many are not put off by the prospect of being monitored is great news. Activity monitoring is a vital tool to combat potential internal threats that many organisations should be implementing within their cyber security arsenals.”
Also, the firm adds, behavioural analytics can be used to detect when employees may be suffering from symptoms of burnout. Nayyar says: “By employing behavioural analytics, companies are able to detect when employees’ behaviours breach individual ‘norms’ and can identify when people might be acting in a way that suggests they’re over-worked.”
The company points to a recent announcement from World Health Organisation (WHO) that ‘workplace burnout’ has been included in its International Classification of Diseases, marking an important step for employee welfare.
See https://gurucul.com/solutions/insider-threat.
