Awareness Technologies Advisory: The Top Employee Productivity and Security Trends in 2011

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- A combination of powerful economic and technology drivers are changing the way people work - increased use of contractors; mobility-enabled at-home and on-the-go workers; and the intermingling of work and personal interaction through the powerful draw of social media.  These trends are combining to create new security headaches for businesses seeking to limit productivity loss and insider threats, and they form the core of Awareness Technologies Inc.'s ("ATI") analysis of top employee productivity and security trends that affected businesses in 2011.

"Looking back at the big trends and events that occurred this year, we witnessed a major boom in social media and how it increasingly became involved in every aspect of our daily lives," said Ron Penna, Chief Strategy Officer at ATI, the only provider of Complete Insider Threat Security On-Demand. "With enterprises allowing their employees to work remotely, access to personal laptops and confidential information, employee productivity and security were major concerns for businesses all around."

Penna strongly believes that companies should have the proper policies in place, especially when monitoring employee productivity and social media use. The exposing of professional information and maybe even confidential data through various social media platforms allows for insider risks to occur. Allowing employees to work remotely causes the concern for excessive social media use, as well as trusted information to be exposed.

Awareness Technologies has seen companies increasingly looking for ways to manage employee productivity and security, and believes there are techniques in which these concerns can be addressed.

Employee Productivity and Security Trend #1 - Explosion of workplace social media use

Facebook usage is measured in hours in many departments and most employees are on Facebook and other social media sites for personal use. Furthermore, employees are increasingly posting confidential data such as customer information on personal blogs like Tumblr to avoid detection.  While banning the use of social media is not an option for many businesses, companies should be proactive in developing an effective social media policy and educating employees on appropriate behaviors.  To have greater visibility on employee productivity, advanced web filtering tools are available for monitoring and controlling web surfing and blocking access to inappropriate websites.

Employee Productivity and Security Trend #2 - Escalating insider risks as more companies use third party contractors

As companies continue to remain focused on reducing costs, they are increasingly using more third party contractors and many of them have completely unmonitored access to corporate networks. Companies need to consider potential risks from the leakage of confidential data from careless and malicious contractors accessing your company data. Deploying the proper safeguards includes having the right policies, training and use of technology to monitor and prevent insider threats.

Employee Productivity and Security Trend #3 - Rise in work at home employees as 'flex time' gains greater popularity

As the remote workforce trend continues to gain popularity as well as greater employee use of portable devices, crimes associated with these devices are also on the rise. The  proven way to prevent laptop theft and data loss is the use of laptop protection software, that will allow you to remotely retrieve and delete any files from your computer without the thief's knowledge, as well as geo-locate its position in real time and monitor all of their activities.

Employee Productivity and Security Trend #4 - Security risks even greater with remote employees

With the increase of remote users downloading more and more software as they are usually given administrative rights on their computers, the opportunities for malicious virus that spread quickly and damage thousands of files are even greater.  Furthermore, more employees are remotely using more Twitter apps and games on their remote laptop posing both a greater security risk and loss of productivity.   Preventive-minded companies are well served to deploy network access control software and other DLP (data loss prevention) solutions, many of which are affordable for companies of all sizes.

While each of these tips can be very helpful in their own right, the most comprehensive, proven way to ensure employee productivity and prevent data leakage from your organization is the use of monitoring software for PCs and smartphones that can be reviewed remotely. For more information visit: www.awarenesstechnologies.com.

About Awareness Technologies

As the pioneer in Unified Insider Threat Prevention, Awareness Technologies' SaaS-based service is easily available and affordable for businesses of any size - especially the SMB market. Architected at the endpoint, clients can access 5 technologies including Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Web Filtering, Employee Monitoring, Laptop recovery, and Mobile Monitoring through one agent download and one control console.  Awareness Technologies has over 10,000 businesses world-wide currently depending on its solutions to protect their data from insider threats, and has been named on the 2011 Deloitte Technology Fast 500, 2011 Inc. 5000 and 2011 Software 500. For more information, please visit www.awarenesstechnologies.com.

SOURCE Awareness Technologies