Employees, Get Used to Working under Surveillance
Let’s face it. Monitoring employees’ e-mail, tracking their Internet use, logging everything done at keyboards has become the norm in Corporate America.
With computer monitoring software so cheap and easy-to-apply it’s no wonder that workplace surveillance becomes more and more widespread.
Here are some figures from the 2005 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey made by American Management Association and the consulting firm ePolicy Institute:
76% of companies monitor websites their employees visit, and 65% use software to block connections to certain websites.
36% use software to log keystrokes and keep track of the time spent at keyboards. 50% store and review computer files.
55% store and review employees’ email messages.
So, wherever you work, the odds of your company’s keeping a keen technology-aided eye on you are pretty high. There is no such thing as privacy at the workplace, experts say. Let’s not have any illusions about it. Even if you are allowed to use workplace computer at lunchtime or after work, the policy covering the use of computers and the Internet applies as well.
According to the same study, 84% companies surveyed do have rules covering personal use of email, 81% have established policies governing the Internet use. So, majority of organizations at least have set up rules for everybody to observe.
80% of organizations that monitor keystrokes and time spent at keyboards let employees know about that. 86% notify staff about email monitoring, and 89% alert workers that their Web activities are tracked. These figures show that for vast majority of employers the aim is to make workforce to comply with the rules rather than to catch somebody red-handed. The remaining 20%, 16% and 11% probably carry out clandestine monitoring. Too bad, but there is little employees can do in most such cases.
It seems odd, but under the law, in many states employers aren’t obliged to warn employees about computer and /or email monitoring. We may grumble it’s not fair, we might protest, but that’s that. At least in the vast majority of organizations monitoring is not surreptitious.
If the rules are set, the only option is to conform to them. And try not to take offense, though it is not easy. Though employers sometimes are carrying it too far, in most cases they aren’t doing it out of pure malice. Company owners are protecting themselves from reputation-damaging scandals, costly workplace harassment lawsuits and data leakage.
Employers are expected to protect employees from hostility at workplaces, and they monitor, say, email messages to spot those who are sending obscene or hateful emails. Software for email monitoring costs far less than a single compensation payment in case the victim sues the firm. Lots of companies can’t afford litigation; those who can, don’t want it.
Even logging every keystroke can be justified if the employees are dealing with trade secrets or some other highly valuable (in a direct sense of this word) information. It doesn’t necessarily imply distrust — some companies just won’t survive if some confidential information is lost.
If the employer doesn’t allow staff to surf a bit during lunch breaks, it doesn’t at all mean the boss is a petty tyrant or just greedy. There is another reason for these restrictions.
Unrestricted Web surfing from workplace computers leads to corporate PCs swarming with malicious software. In fact, lots of these computers already are choke full of various unwanted programs, some of them extremely dangerous.
Last October, America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance examined the computers of 329 randomly selected Internet users and found that 85 percent of them contained some form of spyware. The average “infected” computer had more than 90 spyware and adware programs.
The State of Spyware Report, made by Webroot Software released on May 3, says:
During Q1, 2005, 87% of scans made with Webroot’s SpyAudit software found some form of unwanted program (Trojan, system monitor, cookie or adware) on corporate PCs.
Excluding cookies, which are not such a serious problem as key logger programs or Trojan horses, more than 55% of corporate PCs contained unwanted programs. There were an average of 7.2 non-cookie infections per PC.
Now consider the fact that no single anti-virus or anti-spyware product protects against all the crap that might land in workplace computers. You are lucky if it’s just irritating adware. But in case of programs capable of stealing information, like keyloggers or keylogging-containing Trojans, a single “overlooked” program may mean lost valuable data.
Of course, no regulation is perfect. Everywhere where there are rules, policies and regulations there is always room for abuse or misunderstanding. It seems that the human factor is the weakest link here.
Ancient Romans used to say “Dura lex sed lex” (the law is harsh but it is a law). Present-day computerized workforce can paraphrase it “the policy is strict but it’s a policy”.
Alexandra Gamanenko currently works at Raytown Corporation, LLC — an independent software developing company that provides various solutions for information security.
Learn more — visit the company’s website http://www.softsecurity.com
Anti-Spyware Protection Behind How-To Tips
There is no doubt that “how-to articles” have become a separate genre. One can find such an article about almost anything; there are even some entitled “How to Write a How-To Article”. And, of course, the Web is swarming with the ones like “10 Steps to Protect Your PC from Spyware”(if not 10, any number will do; odd ones like 5,7,9 are most popular) or “How to Forget About Spyware For Good”. Please don’t accuse me of being sarcastic — I am not; all these articles by all means are informative and so very useful. They all include really handy tips to protect you from this recently emerged plague called spyware. But
A typical how-to article is short and snappy, with all unnecessary particulars carefully avoided. An ideal one is a clear scheme of what to do and how (because it is a how-to article). Some essential facts will surely be omitted just for the sake of brevity. Let’s look into the author’s “trash bin” for info ruthlessly (and maybe baselessly) thrown away.
Hint one: What on earth is spyware?
When you decide to apply “anti-spyware protection“, you’d better realize what you want to be protected against. Unfortunately, there is not such thing as complete security. And
“There is no such thing as spyware in itself”– you are perplexed, aren’t you? I bet you are; what’s more, it was Kaspersky who recently expressed this opinion. “The term spyware is basically a marketing gimmick,” wrote Kaspersky in the company weblog on March 03, 2005. “Just to separate new ersatz-security products from traditional ones, just to push almost zero-value products to the security market.”
This quote (extremely curtailed and out of the context) have already spread all over the Internet, but it is very useful to read the whole posting to see the whole picture, so visit http://www.viruslist.com/en/Weblog?Weblogid=156679222
Few definitions caused so much controversy and confusion as did “spyware”. Eugeny Kaspersky blames marketers for having coined this term–and partially he is right. But only partially.
As a professional, he classified various malicious programs according to their structure and characteristics; in this classification there is indeed no place for “spyware”, which is too vague term to exactly denote anything with a particular structure.
On the other hand, marketers and journalists needed an expressive, easy-to-remember word to name existing (!) information-stealing programs to tell users (who may be not so versed in software as its developers) how to protect their computers.
What is “spyware” then? Spyware is a commonly used general term for any type of software that gathers personal information about the user without his or her knowledge and transmits it to a destination specified by the author of the program. Spyware applications are frequently bundled in other programs–often freeware or shareware–that can be downloaded from the Internet.
So, the term is very general and doesn’t reflect either structure or characteristics of such software. After all, it is only a conventional word for programs that steal information.
According to Kaspersky, programs which are now called spyware, have existed for years. It’s true. Who disagrees? Password-stealing Trojans were actually known as far back as in 1996. But it’s also true that most dangerous information-stealing programs are on the rise. Spy Audit survey made by ISP Earthlink and Webroot Software (the survey lasted for a whole year 2004) showed–16.48% of all scanned consumer PCs in 2004 had a system-monitor, 16.69% had a Trojan.
Another bitter truth is that some unscrupulous producers now are jumping at the chance of making quick money. There are lots of suspicious, low-performing, or adware-installing products. See, for example, the list at http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm But saying that all the dedicated anti-spyware solutions are like thatTo put it mildly, it’s a bit too much.
Hint Two: Too Many Promises Made — Is it Possible to Keep them?
There are loads of software programs nowadays created for fighting spyware. An ordinary consumer tends to get lost in plenty of information and lots of products, which are supposed to help him get rid of spyware. If all the advertising claims were true, it would have been easy. In reality it isn’t.
Anti- spyware and anti-viruses work almost the same way. The efficiency of most anti-spyware programs is determined (and restricted, too) by signature bases. The more code clips (i.e. signatures) there are in the base, the more effectively the program works - it means the more spyware programs it can identify. Only programs from the signature base are recognized as spyware; all other spy programs will be running unnoticed and unstopped.
So, absolutely all the signature- basis- containing programs are pretty much the same, whatever their ads say. They all rely on the same “match pattern”; the difference is only how many signatures each of them contains.
What conclusion we can make here? The bigger the signature base, the more reliable the product is, no matter whether it is anti-spyware or an anti-virus. If the software applies signature base, it’s better to choose a product from a big company, which can afford spending plenty of money on research and updates.
Another conclusion we can make is that all such software without constant updating pretty quickly becomes useless and even dangerous, because users still expect it to protect their PCs. New spyware is constantly being developed, and anti-spyware developers have to catch up with it all the time. This race started when very first malicious programs appeared, and it is impossible to say whether it will ever end.
Alexandra Gamanenko currently works at Raytown Corporation, LLC–an independent software developing company. Software, developed by this company, does not rely on signature bases. Its innovative technology is capable of disabling the very processes of stealing information,such as keylogging, screenshoting, etc.
Learn more — visit the company’s website: http://www.anti-keyloggers.com
What to Look for in a Video Card
The proper graphics card can help speed up almost any system by taking the responsibility of many visual functions, allowing the CPU to work more effectively in other areas. Let’s take a look at a few of the key features to look for in a graphics card.
Most all graphics cards are based on an Nvidia or ATI Radeon chip set. For the casual home or office user, any of today’s video cards are adequate. If you’re just doing Excel spreadsheets you might not need to spend $500 on a video card, but if you have a 21″ monitor and want to view that spreadsheet at 1600 x 1200 with a high refresh rate, it may be worth the investment. Where things start to change is on high end games, that’s where the Geforce and Radeon cards make the difference.
Memory Matters
As with every other facet of computing, more is always better. However, you don’t need a 256MB card if you’re just going to be using Quickbooks. For most office applications, a 32 or 64MB card is adequate. For gamers or those doing some sort of video production work, a minimum of 128MB is recommended, with a strong lean to 256. The more memory your video card has, the higher the resolution, and the larger the number of colors it can display.
Connectors and Interfaces
A standard SVGA card is going to have a single VGA connector. Higher end cards will have an S-Video and a DVI connector as well. What this means is that you have to pay attention to what type of monitor you have. DVI is all digital, like HDTV. The S-Video can be used to output to your TV for gaming on a larger screen.
Now a days, you will have either a PCI or an AGP slot for your video card. AGP stands for Advanced Graphics Port and as you might have guessed, means there are enhancements in performance when using and AGP slot. If your current video card is built into the motherboard, it is likely robbing the system of valuable memory because the system RAM is shared with it. This is another good reason to upgrade your video card.
John Gibb manages http://www.computer-and-printer-reviews.com
The site dedicated to computers and printers.
