#Fortune500 #EmployeeMonitoringTools #LaptopActivityTracking #CorporateSoftware #WorkplaceProductivity 🖥️
Are you curious about the tools that Fortune 500 companies use to track employee laptop activity? You’re not alone. Many employees, like the individual who posted the question above, are interested in learning more about how their activities are being monitored while at work. In this article, we will explore some of the most common tools and software that large corporations use to track employee laptop activity and ensure workplace productivity.
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## Why Do Fortune 500 Companies Track Employee Laptop Activity?
Fortune 500 companies often have thousands of employees spread out across various locations, making it challenging for management to monitor everyone’s productivity effectively. By tracking employee laptop activity, corporations can ensure that their employees are using their work hours efficiently and following company guidelines for internet usage and data security.
## Common Tools Used by Fortune 500 Companies
### 1. Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Microsoft Endpoint Manager is a comprehensive solution that allows companies to manage and secure their devices, including laptops used by employees. This tool provides features for tracking device usage, monitoring software installations, and implementing security measures to protect sensitive company data.
### 2. Teramind
Teramind is another popular employee monitoring tool that Fortune 500 companies utilize to track employee laptop activity. It provides real-time monitoring, productivity analysis, and behavior analytics to help companies identify any potential security risks or productivity issues within their workforce.
### 3. ActivTrak
ActivTrak is a cloud-based monitoring and analytics tool that Fortune 500 companies use to understand how their employees are using their work devices. It offers features like activity tracking, productivity measurement, and user behavior analytics to ensure that employees are focused on their tasks and adhering to company policies.
## First-Hand Experiences
### 1. Lack of Privacy Concerns
One common concern among employees is the lack of privacy when their laptop activity is being monitored. While it’s understandable that companies need to ensure productivity and security, employees often feel like their every move is being watched, leading to feelings of stress and distrust.
### 2. Impact on Workplace Culture
Some employees have reported that the use of monitoring tools in their workplace has had a negative impact on the overall company culture. Instead of fostering trust and autonomy, the constant surveillance has created an environment of micromanagement and decreased morale.
## It’s All About Balance
While it’s important for companies to ensure that their employees are using their work hours efficiently and following security protocols, it’s equally crucial to strike a balance that respects employee privacy and fosters a positive workplace culture.
In conclusion, Fortune 500 companies utilize a range of tools to track employee laptop activity, with the goal of ensuring productivity and security. However, it’s essential for companies to consider the impact of these tools on employee privacy and workplace culture. Finding a balance between monitoring and autonomy is key to maintaining a healthy work environment.
There’s lots of ways to do it, I work for a very large bank reviewing legal documents. I’m expected to be available for inbound calls for a certain percentage of my day. The phone software we use shows all that.
I bought a mouse mover* because I work from home and I regularly have builds that take 15 minutes to an hour to complete and I don’t see the point in sitting there and moving the mouse. Nobody has asked me about my irregular mouse movements.
* Don’t buy anything that plugs into your work laptop. What I got is just a little seat for the mouse to sit on that has a moving piece so the mouse thinks it’s moving. The device itself just needs USB power which I pull from the wall.
There are tools deployed like ActiveTrak (or innacuratly Aternity) that monitor activity and can screenshot desktops etc. Basically assume you are being clock-watched by your corporate devices.
The day my boss comes to me with this kind of data and asks what I am doing is the day I quit. I am a Sr. Cloud Architect and most of my time is putting together project plans and reading customer requests. I may actually spend about 30 – 45 minutes a day moving my mouse or typing on my keyboard, but all of my projects are up to date or ahead of schedule.
Assume that everything you do on your corp laptop is tracked, monitored and controlled. It’s their laptop really.
Whether your company uses this information is another story but they likely have it.
I wrote corporate spyware for years.
Usually it is your vpn and security scanning software that can register your every move. Zscaler and that stuff.
Sentinel One is for antivirus and security, but it’s quite invasive and could have tracking features, or features that could be twisted in tracking you.
I work in brand protection and data analytics and they use “Active Trak” pretty sure is what it’s called
Microsoft really isn’t in the business of tracking users the way you’re thinking. They are more in the business of good security practices and improving user experience on their platform. Even then, it’s not an “out of the box” setup with a new 0365\Azure tenant.
Things that do come out of the box are basic things like login stamps (time, place, IP) and are held for 30 days by default. File access and sharing is another big one for SharePoint files. Teams does go a little deeper but these metrics are really used to measure overall use and adoption throughout the enterprise. The basic Teams Usage Report, which is available to any admin who either has full Teams Administrator or Global Administrator rights can be drilled down to the user level over a max of six months to see things like how many Teams teams you are a member of. How many 1:1 chats you sent. How many teams channel chats you sent. How many calls you made, and how many Meetings you attended.
Each Teams meeting can be drilled into to view which modalities were used (think video, screen sharing, etc); who else was in the meeting and how long they stayed. Other points of interest include things like the type of computer you are using, the headset type, camera type (if used), Operating System and level, which client you used (thick or web) and the client version. Audio and video quality is also calculated and assigns a quality to your call.
These metrics are intended to assist in troubleshooting and to improve user experience. I’ve never been at a place that uses this stuff as a metric for user activity. The only exception to that rule is if there is a request to see if Person A was in a meeting like they said they were because no one remembers them being there and\or they lied to someone.
More advanced features include more detailed information but need to be configured across the different platforms in the O365 ecosystem. However, they are not really targeted for tracking user activity, but preventing security breaches and\or analyzing them after they happen. In most large orgs, these responsibilities fall to the Security and Compliance teams to enforce, and rarely have I run into a S&C team that is interested in what you’re doing. It’s almost always all big picture stuff. The only exception to that is highly secure environments and the user is almost always made aware.
Between what I outlined above, and some of the other “under the hood” functions, an admin with the right access could put together a rough outline of what you did during the day in O365, but as I tell non-technical people who are looking for that sort of play-by-play activity report, don’t count on the built-in tools to give a clear picture. I mean I can tell you that Joe Blow from accounting accessed a spreadsheet in SharePoint, and for how long he accessed it, but without going in and looking at the file itself to see the changes, I couldn’t tell you if he actually did anything with that document.
Requests like this usually need approval as well. And due to the level of access required to gather the data, it is rarely a manager or C suite level execs doing the work. In a well rounded org, a manager would submit a ticket. That ticket would route to the S&C team, and they would make the decision based on a the business case to approve it. From there, the ticket would go to an admin with the proper rights, and the admin would pull the data, send it to the requester, and let them decide what to do with it. These mostly come across as requests for pulling Teams Chats, emails sent\received, and audits on file access. Not how much time you did or did not spend in front of your computer.
That’s not to say there are not other products out there that can “plug-in” to these platforms to provide the type of tracking you are thinking about. There are plenty, but in the orgs I have managed, they are an exception. Not the standard.
Does anyone know if the Epic EHR has productivity tracking?
Well they can track everything, its only matter of money and will of your bosses.
I work in IT and I’ll be honest. The only things that are probably not safe are your emails and chat logs. We can look at VPN packet captures and see what sort of things you’re sending but only if it’s been enabled in your firewall. Just avoid putting anything personal or private on work equipment
I work in IT for a Fortune 500, we have screen recording for call center people, but otherwise, we just use web traffic monitoring and SIEM stuff for security reasons. We aren’t super big on productivity tracking for the most part, though the idea has been floated dozens of times at this point t.
Teams
A really big magnifying lens
There are countless tools, it all depends on how much they want to spend on it.
If they get serious about it they will require your webcam to be on and use facial detection.
They can have designated people remote into your work computer and watch the screen activity. Typically if they are doing this it would be part of help desk and it would be a couple of people quickly looping through dozens and dozens of other employees. You wouldn’t be able to tell someone was looking at your screen without using some sort of packet sniffing.
Microsoft might be doing it but if you have a work computer, which work issued to you, then they probably installed security software on it and mobile device management. These are legitimate tools to help protect company information incase of loss of theft but they can also be used to remotely install software, read the contents of anything on the device, log keystrokes and mouse movement, and activate any connected peripheral. There’s a dozen big name companies a fortune 200 company might purchase this kind of software from.
if it’s that companies lap top they can put any tracking software they want on it. If it is your laptop they can’t but they can only track what goes in and out of their location.
If you have outlook there will be telemetry from that, same with office 365. There’s also an agent on your workstation that can monitor when anything is launched or installed on your computer
Nice try CEO.
Gigatrons
A technological rat.
Download the Baldurs Gate character creator and have it just click reroll all day. Mouse moved between two places.
One of my friends got into a situation with another co-worker. For some reason HR was afraid to reprimanded the co-worker so they tried to find excuses fire my friend. In one meeting with HR my friend was asked about some aggressive comment he allegedly made. My friend was confused because that comment was made by his friend, at his own house. Even though he’s not a remote worker, the company used the laptop to spy on him after hours in his own home.
When the pandemic hit and we worked from home, my boss asked me what I thought of monitoring software. I told him flat out that I wouldn’t do it. If you don’t trust your emoyees to get there work done then they shouldn’t be employees. Also added that it’s a failure of management if they need to monitor that closely. It was the last I heard on the subject. I’m also the only IT guy so I know they didn’t have someone else just do it. Because I checked every day on all the computers for new software.
At the very least. Microsoft knows if you have their apps open and can report on the cumulative activity. Mouse movers won’t work to trick them. I don’t know what level of management has access. It’s through ODB so it’s not like something they have to set up themselves. But like if your boss is monitoring this at an individual level, you should leave. It’s mostly so CTOs can brag about how efficiently they spent their budget with Microsoft and how much usage they have.
Get yourself one of these!
![gif](giphy|HQGzdiNhg52oM|downsized)
My company sent me a sealed MBP with no pre-installed software so they have absolutely no idea what I use it for.
I’m tired of working 😞
I forgot the name of the software, but someone high up in management at my job, and I play video games on the company time. Yes, i am aware of the irony here. We were looking through what information is being tracked so we can work around it. The app being used was checking what apps are the main window and how long. It reported that in very fancy graphs as well, but I don’t recall any counters that check if you are actually doing anything in those apps.
just bring up task manager and you can probably see what program is doing exactly that
Homebase.
We believe you corporate narc
Not sure the exact software, but I know they monitor activity in the form of browsing and keystrokes.
The one idjit got fired for looking at naughty things in his computer and being dumb enough to save it in what he thought was a “hidden” folder.
They’ve disabled most streaming services while on the work WiFi after a shocking amount of company laptops were found to be streaming Netflix and YouTube for most of the day.
Considering you cannot even connect to the internet until you connect via their VPN I wouldn’t trust anything on that laptop.
Do you seriously have to be doing something ALL THE TIME you’re at work? And are they monitoring it? I’d quit in a heartbeat!
NIPPON is one such tool.
Absolutely anyone who works for any company that would heavily monitor should quit. L
The one the company I work for uses is called ActivTrack. It is legit the most budget option as I don’t believe it even tracks inactivity per se, it gives us reports on how much time is spent in an application.
To be completely honest, and this obviously depends on the quality of organization and leadership, but I don’t think anyone has been fired yet for daily inactivity and we’re trying to use it to understand vendor relationships (are we spending too much time in something because the product we’re interacting with sucks) and process improvements while waiting for overall internal product improvements.
Work for a large insurance company. Can confirm every movement you or any employee make is monitored and recorded. It’s then shown to us in reports showing how much time in each app and doing whatever.
Tracking is one thing but spying is on another level. I think we should rely on trust and not on tracking software.
For me it was what they “couldn’t track.” My old sales job required the team to be on the phone (Avaya was the system) for the majority of our day, while taking/making 40 customer contacts. We also had dollar amounts to hit. Now, I was more effective via email, but was told numerous times there was no way to track those so they wouldn’t count towards my contacts. We used Outlook and Salesforce. I absolutely know they lied to me about that as my next job tracked production exclusively via emails sent.
Monitoring you wouldn’t believe. I use to get regular emailed school reports about child with a detailed listing of every single website visited, how much time they spent and anything and everything they do from the time they open the laptop up. It’s completely strapped
Right after a hostile takeover the boss put a keystroke tracker on my company supplied laptop – everybody’s computer was taken away for a bit so that “a security app could be installed”. I only realized it because I was preparing documentation for a training class I was to give the next week. At that point I knew enough about Windows 95 (this was a while ago) to dig into what might be causing the issue. Found a service that looked unfamiliar so I stopped it. The computer ran fine.
Next morning when I booted up the laptop was slow, so I stopped that same service. Coincidentally about a half hour later the internal support folks came and took the laptop. When they brought it back I no longer had the ability to stop services. I could not finish my documentation… I was pissed.
That night I took the laptop home, turned off wifi, opened Notepad, and typed out a scathing note about bosses not trusting employees and not having the balls to say it. Yes, that is what it stated – I thought I was a goner anyways and let my anger get the better of me. I then closed Notepad without saving the document.
Next day at work I was called into my boss’ office with another person or two. It was explained that someone had heard half of a conversation I had on the phone where I had mentioned one of the deposed managers, so the boss thought I was sending the ex- folks business. I wasn’t. I told the guy “You pay me – I work for you. Period”. We agreed my laptop would be restored so I could do my job. Things worked out well – I am still there 20+ years later.
Observe it by Proofpoint.
Azurze sign on data (via sso) Can be helpful too. Instead of slackng do your work
I work in Norway. If this ever even happend, the company would be in great threat for spying on coworkers. Also the work union would get involved. I work for a american company that use apps for tracing the device, and i sure hope they send me a message with proof of them spying, so i can send it to the state “Datatilsynet” and to my work union “Industri Energi” 🙌