Whose network is it, anyway?
That's what a lot of businesses start wondering after they deploy Internet connections to the desktop. They spend tens of thousands of dollars on technology and training, and they reap the reward: employees who spend their time cruising the ESPNET SportsZone and checking the value of their stocks with PointCast.
I guess it's just another phase of the continuing battle between labor and business. But even mid-level managers could cost their companies big bucks if they spend a few minutes one day using their company's T1 to cruise the hot porn sites on the Web; after all, some co-worker could reasonably file a lawsuit claiming that the images of the unclothed beauties on the screen created a hostile work environment.
Fortunately, technology is rising to the occasion. As you read this, businesses are deploying a new generation of Internet monitoring software that will help track down wasteful or inappropriate uses of corporate intranets and help hold employees accountable. Even better, all these programs will generate sophisticated reports - reports that could hold up in court if an employee tries to slap the company with a wrongful termination suit after they are let go for feeding their news-junkie habit on company time.
Netscape's Proxy Server is perhaps one of the best-known network-monitoring tools. By design, the Proxy Server sits at the gateway between a company's internal and external networks. When a user's Web browser goes to get a page from the Net, the browser sends the request to the Proxy Server. The Proxy Server first checks its cache to see if the document is there. If it is, the server sends it immediately. If the document isn't there, the Proxy Server retrieves the document from the Web, sends it to the user, and keeps a copy for itself.
Caching Proxy Servers are a great way to boost Internet performance, especially over slow links. And indeed, faster performance is one of the main things that Netscape is selling: "Use Network Proxy Servers to cache frequently requested information at Internet gateways, departments, and remote offices," says the product's data sheet.
But one can't help noticing the other features that have been built into Proxy Server 2.5. There's "content filtering," allowing you to selectively grant or block access to particular Web sites or Web pages that your company finds objectionable. (You can even create a list of users, each with his or her own password, who are allowed to override the blocks.) It can also generate a list of reports - including by user - to show what people are looking at.
There are other products for monitoring private networks, such as Sequel's Net Access Manager and Optimal Networks' Optimal Internet Monitor. These programs eschew Netscape's performance-enhancing features, and concentrate on surveillance.
Optimal Networks' is one of the most interesting of these products. The program actually runs a packet sniffer and covertly monitors all traffic on your LAN. It can then provide your network manager with a detailed list of who is reading what and from where.
According to Optimal, merely monitoring employees - and telling them they're being monitored - is actually better than simply blocking access. When you block, there's always an incentive for employees to try to "beat the system" and get around the monitor. And there's the impossible task of keeping a list of objectionable sites up to date. When you monitor, on the other hand, employees exercise self-censorship and adjust their behavior. And if they don't? Well, there's always your server's log files.
When I asked the folks at Optimal how they felt about doing Big Brother-ware, they said there were other products on the market that provide the same sort of employee monitoring; what's really different about Optimal's product, they said, is the ability to monitor individual machines as well.
For example, you can use Internet Monitor to monitor access to your own Web site. The program will tell you if your Web server has crashed, or if it is overloaded. It can monitor round-trip times between your Web server and your subscribers, giving you ammunition for the next time you need to complain to your ISP. Internet Monitor can even give you a list of bad links on your site, by monitoring which incoming HTTP requests receive 404 errors.
Internet Monitor can also tell you how much of your network's bandwidth is being used by PointCast. It will also map out your company's traffic from site to site. That's useful if you're considering installing new data links and want to have rational numbers to back up your decision.
Privacy activists might be upset that so many companies are developing programs to spy on employees. But let's face it: Monitoring software is a product category. And even without it, Web servers, mail servers, and backup tapes all contain detailed logs of an employee's actions. If worker monitoring upsets you as much as it upsets me, don't criticize the companies making the software. Instead, criticize our lawmakers, who have steadfastly refused to pass laws that would regulate the practice.
