GridStream Productions

Got some disturbing news yesterday from my insider in our Tech department that for the past month they've had software installed on our machines that monitors any activity on our computers and take periodic and random screenshots of what your machine is doing at any given time. In this upsetting and frustrating trend of micromanagement, they are cracking down on anyone who visits non-work related websites at any time during the work day. My boss has put me on a type of probation, without telling me this was being monitored (but when I found out, I was like "Oh, no wonder").

I came from a work environment where as long as your work got done by the end of the day, they didn't care what in the hell you did with the rest of your time. However, in this new regime, streaming radio stations is not allowed, so I will no longer be able to listen to GSP while at work, or visit the GSP website during the day.

Indeed, this is a disturbing trend in major companies that's on the rise. Working for a massive corporation myself, I've often wondered if and when they will install such monitoring software into my department...or if they haven't already. Chances are they haven't, but they do have different ways to monitor what anyone does on the internet in my workplace.

I too came originally from a "family-style" work environment, ironically at the exact same desk I'm at now. It was a family-owned radio conglomerate, and all they truly cared about was that the work got done. Now it's owned by a nation-wide corp and they feel the need to know everything about me. They even require all employees to turn in their driving record, for crying out loud, whether or not your job title even includes anything about driving. Only a matter of time before they start monitoring what we eat for lunch.

I loathe what corporate america has become on a thousand more levels than I did 10 years ago.

Speaking from the IT side of things, I'll give our point of view on this.

Allowing people to go anywhere they want on the internet is a major security risk for companies. The internet is full of applications and websites that can do harm to your computer. We are severely understaffed, as are almost all IT departments in the US, which means we do not have the manpower in order to fix these systems after they are infected with viruses, spyware, adware, and malicious applications. Because of this lack of funding into our department, we have to lower our quality of service, therefore we restrict several domains and websites from being viewable.

Next up is the radio station listening. I agree that there are problems with this. I work a lot better when I can listen to music, and CD's often can't cut it. I work in both office and production style environments. The production floor used to have music playing to help morale with the people on the floor. They banned all cd players and radios, mostly because people were arguing over what music to play (I like country, I hate rock, I love rock, I hate country, etc). Yet there were still people making use of radio streaming despite this ban from Human Resources.

Now, from the IT point of view, streaming content is the bane of our existance. Why, you might be wondering. Well, the network pipes are limited. When there are a lot of network heavy applications, such as our engineering apps, the total network activity needs to be kept to a minimum so speed can be kept up. We work in multiple sites, which means we have basicly a mini-internet in our city since a few of these buildies are several miles apart. That means that the network pipe between us and that building is limited in bandwith.

When several people start listening to music, it uses up the bandwith between the two plants. So, people who work with AutoCAD, are opening up files that are very large on the server, and communicating between each other with their computers, start to complain about it being slow. In order to maximize the amount of available bandwith, we have to limit the services people can access. When we notice a certain computer is using a lot of bandwith, it alerts us on our network monitoring computers. The Network Administrator checks the system out, tries to find out what it is, then I get to be the bastard IT guy and slam the hammer down.

Not only is bandwith limited between facilities, but it's also limited to our pipes to the internet. It's expensive, and it's going to be shared across a network that will be global. I'm talking about pipes going from here in Florida, to locations in California, New York, Chicago, parts of Canada, England, Norway, Iraq and Hong Kong. Our company is global, and the technology systems we'll be using will be shared between all of the companies. Some of these restrictions on applications such as internet radio streaming will be banned mostly so people will actually be able to use their computers on the network, otherwise everything will run too slow even with brand new, top-of-the-line computers.

As for monitoring your computers, a lot of it goes a bit too far. One of the things about a business relationship is there has to be trust. When companies put monitoring equipment in place to view your surfing habits, it tends to show that your managers and leaders do not trust you. IT does not, and has not put anything like this in place. We do put a warning out, however, that whatever is on a person's computer is not protected from IT's eyes. We are able to see basicly any document in the company, and we have access to anything that is secured or encrypted. Mostly because, we are the gatekeepers.

We have remote management utilities that allow us to see everything installed on a person's computer without actually connecting to it. We can connect to a computer remotely and take control of the mouse and keyboard. I can black out a monitor and lock the peripheral devices, so if I need to work on something, I can make it so they can't control or see what I am doing. It is rather useful when uninstalling software.

Anyway, I agree, you guys are getting a lot of trash with the monitoring of your computer use. The driving thing is ridiculous in Tarryk's case. But a few of the things you might be experiencing have an actual purpose and reason behind them.

Z, I understand where you're coming from, but with our company it's a little different:

1) Our IT staff is overpaid and underqualified. They inflate the importance of their positions by restricting our computer priviledges in the most extreme methods imaginable. (I had to request special permission to move my computer monitor on my desk, for instance, and had to have someone come down and do it for me). I'm not allowed to adjust the gamma settings on my computer monitor, as an example. And it's complete and total admin lockdown on everything like that. They complain about being overworked, but it is their own policies that put them in that situation (having to get someone from help desk to come down to adjust the brightness on my monitor is absolutely ridiculous.)

2) Our company consists of less than 100 employees. There's no way that procedures this invasive are necessary to limit bandwidth usage. Installing software on our machines that allows them to VIEW WHAT WE ARE DOING, log our keystrokes, and take screenshots of what is on our display at any given time, is not necessary. I pay my bills online, and have viewed my bank balance online from my work computer, and they should not be able to have access to that. (I won't be doing anything money related on the computer at work again, that's for damn sure). My source assures me this is not a step that was taken as a security concern, but as a "productivity monitoring tool".

As far as productivity is concerned, I got less done today than I've gotten done in the past week. I kept having to sit down and remind myself not to take a look at my art board to see if there are new posts, and I found myself chatting with my coworkers, which (while socially more acceptable, I imagine) is far less conducive to productivity.

Nex mentioned to me that there might be legal ramifications to their monitoring our activity on the computer, but most employers these days have you sign a waiver stating that the computers and anything on them are property of the company you work for, and they have the right to monitor them, blah blah blah. I even recall asking about it when I was hired and being told "It's just a standard form, but we don't do any of that"

I have loads of sympathy for IT teams in general, but based on my personal experience with our IT team, they are no more knowledgeable about computers than I am, which worries me greatly. When I have to watch over the shoulder of my tech guy to make sure he installs the right driver for my keyboard, I get a little edgy about the fact that he makes 5 times as much money as I do.

The problems we face in the age of technology. Your keystrokes & websites visited can be tracked with ease, how much time you spend gabbing with your fellow workers can't be automatically logged by a computer(at least not yet), so the office gossip monger get's off cause the boss can't be bothered to actually pay attention to what's happening but when the IT guy says "I can track all their computer usage" the Boss sees a way to crack down on those wasting time.

So does this mean we can talk about Foxy all day long while she's at work?

Yes, so long as we remember to come back and edit the postings before she gets home.