How to catch employees stealing: Monitoring systems
In addition to analyzing computer data, companies can easily monitor the activities of employees. Catching employees in the middle of theft or other misdeeds isn’t as difficult as one might expect. It is important, however, that any covert monitoring of employees be done legally and ethically.
The more commonplace monitoring done by employers includes security guards and strategically located security cameras. More high-tech methods include keycards that restrict access to certain areas of the company and log employees coming and going from those areas. Even more sophisticated monitoring systems include computer software that can mine data such as emails, instant messages, and computer files for keywords and other suspect activities.
Computer systems commonly maintain logs regarding access of computerized records. Those logs usually contain information such as who is logging in, what time she or he is logging in, where the login is coming from, what was accessed while logged in, and what time she or he logged off.
Information such as this can be important to help detect fraud. What if an employee attempts to log in from his home, but he is trying to use the login and password of a co-worker? This might indicate an employee who is attempting to access records without authorization or make nefarious changes to records.
Software is also available to monitor the computerized communications of employees and outsiders. For example, a company with significant intellectual property and trade secrets may wish to monitor outbound emails for keywords related to those items. Outgoing emails containing those words might constitute an inappropriate communication of secret information to people outside the company.
Companies may also wish to monitor who is exchanging email, both internally as well as externally. Significant email activity between two employees in unrelated departments might signify an inappropriate relationship at work or a collusive fraud scheme. Repeated emails to outsiders with no obvious relationship to the company may signify use of company resources for personal reasons, such as job hunting or online dating.
While companies hope that these various types of communications are innocent coincidences, it is still valuable to monitor them in order to protect the company, its employees, and its assets.
