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Effective employee monitoring isn’t about watching every click. It’s about protecting business data, improving, and maintaining trust through transparent, compliant practices.
So the question is, how can you do that?
This guide covers why organizations monitor employee computer activity, available methods, and risks & privacy concerns. Let’s know all the necessary information in detail.
Know Benefits: Why Track Employee Computer Activity?
Check out the section below to find the list of primary reasons why organizations choose to track employees’ computer usage. Here they are:
| Prevent insider threats. | Tracking of employees’ productivity. |
| Detect security incidents earlier. | Meet regulation or compliance guidelines. |
| Sensitive business data protection. | Easily monitor remote or hybrid employees. |
| Optimize IT resource consumption. | Improve workforce planning and execution. |
Read Also: Best user session recording software in 2024.
What are the Involved Risks & Privacy Considerations?
An organization must understand the potential challenges along with the benefits of employee tracking. The involved risks & privacy concerns are as follows:
- Track only work-related activities for employees’ privacy concerns.
- Communicate monitoring goals clearly to keep employees’ morale high.
- Analyze monitoring reports with work quality, project completion, and outcomes.
- Protect sensitive data through encryption, access controls, secure storage, and permissions.
- Review employment laws, privacy regulations, and industry standards before implementations.
How to Monitor Employee Computer Activity Manually?
Windows comes with some native tools that provide basic auditing, security investigations, and compliance checks. Let’s explore them to track employees’ computer usage.
Way 1. Use the Windows Event Viewer for Monitoring
You can take the help of the Windows Event Viewer to monitor user activity. But it doesn’t provide real-time productivity or detailed application usage reports. Here is the list of things that you can review:
- System shutdowns
- Application crashes
- User account changes
- Security-related events
- Successful or failed login attempts
Way 2. Track Employee Activity With Microsoft 365 Audit Logs
Another reliable way to track user actions within Microsoft services (Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, & Entra ID). You use the audit records to track actions like:
- Sent emails
- Accessed files
- Downloaded files
- Shared documents
- Changed permissions
- Created Teams meetings
Important to know: Remember, you can’t monitor desktop applications or overall computer usage.
Way 3. Monitor Employee Activity Via Active Directory Logs
The Activity Directory Logs help you to track actions related to authentication, but not employee productivity. As an administrator, you can monitor:
- User logins
- Account lockouts
- Changed passwords
- Failed authentications
- Modified Group policies
Way 4. Review Firewall Logs Using Track Network Activity
You can use the firewall logs to monitor network security. Inspect incoming and outgoing network traffic to identify suspicious activity. Based on the configuration, firewall logs may include:
- VPN usage
- Blocked websites
- Network sessions
- Destination servers
- Connection attempts
- Malware communication
Way 5. Analyze Windows Defender Reports For Monitoring
Windows Defender is primarily designed to detect compromised systems. With the help of this, you can track the security-related activities. Here is the list that Microsoft Defender records:
- Threat history
- Security alerts
- Exploit attempts
- Malware detections
- Suspicious behavior
Way 6. Track Activity By Checking the Browser History
A browser history can provide a basic overview of visited websites. Organization admins can review these during the investigations. It maintains local records of:
- Downloads
- Cached pages
- Visited websites
- Searched history
Important to know: Browser history reviewing is unsuitable for enterprise-level monitoring as it is least effective.
Why Manual Monitoring Isn’t Recommended For Tracking Activity?
Native tools are never designed to capture the entire computer activity for productivity and security reviews. This fragmented approach becomes difficult as the business grows. Therefore, relying on a dedicated monitoring software is necessary. Use the Kernel Employee Desktop Live Viewer that helps you with all the insights in a single dashboard to monitor employee computer activity within your own terms.
Feature Highlights of Kernel Employee Monitoring Software
- Application usage tracking.
- Track user activity timeline.
- Generate productivity reports.
- Report the accessed websites.
- Monitor suspicious activity easily.
- Centralized monitoring dashboard.
- Search & filter particular incidents.
- Schedule report generation for reviews.
- Comes with remote monitoring support.
- Role-based administration for better control.
- Export reports in a widely accessible format.
Ending Notes
The blog has covered a detailed guide on how to track employees computer activity. You can use either manual or automated solutions to monitor actions performed on systems. For basic monitoring, go with the native ones or choose the recommended solution to track complete activities in real time. The software supports an offline monitoring feature that lets you see the recorded videos as per your convenience.
