Computer Forensic Tools – Providing The Evidence You Need

If you are even considering investigating an employee or monitoring employees in general, consider modern computer forensic tools for a complete solution.

Computer forensic tools allow an employer to gather digital evidence before confronting an employee.

With the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, these types of solutions can also help to monitor employees that are self-quarantined or voluntarily working from home. If your staff is required to work from home, your company needs a way to allow them to work with company data and devices securely.

Computer forensic tools can record everything that occurs on a device, even actions performed online. It provides indisputable proof of someone’s guilt or innocence, allowing for effective and fair employee investigations.

Why use Computer Forensic Tools?

While computer forensic tools can help with serious employee investigations, they can also help identify or prevent issues that affect productivity.

Here are some employee actions that need to be addressed for a company to run efficiently, especially when employees are working remotely:

1. Wasted Time – Such as staff whiling away hours on online games, chat apps, and social media.
2. Digital Abuse – Where employees are sending inappropriate materials or messages from or inside the workplace. These could upset other employees or damage company reputation.
3. Over Sharing – While often not intentionally malicious, some people feel they can share anything with friends on social media. Sometimes this can involve confidential information or be about other staff members.

Serious Use Cases For Computer Forensic Tools

While the above issues are certainly worth monitoring and addressing, there are more serious cases for using computer forensic tools. The situations below can cripple a company through financial losses and reputational damage.

Here are some of the more serious cases for using employee monitoring software:

1. Corporate Data Theft – Sadly, some employees give in to the temptation of easy money and access records that they shouldn’t. Sometimes this information is sold to a competitor or sold online. Either way, customer lists, confidential proprietary information, and financial records can be valuable assets to unscrupulous competitors.
2. Compliance Violations – These issues can cause a business to suffer huge financial losses. From health and safety violations to digital data management, the penalties are expensive and the reputational damage can be a business’s undoing.
3. Employee Misconduct – Sometimes this can be as simple as working online for another company while being paid by your company. However, it can also involve social issues such as bullying or cyber harassment.

How is Computer Forensic Software used for Employee Investigations?

Modern employee investigation software allows authorized users to easily set up and monitor devices.

Once installed, the Admin can then monitor employee actions fully. They get reports and can view exactly what happened at any given time.

Real-time notifications can also help to prevent breaches and issues, as management can act before the event gets too serious.

Computer forensic tools allow authorized staff to gather data from any monitored systems. It collects the information while leaving the original data intact. This is vital, as the original data acts as a secondary layer of proof.

The fact that actions and data are recorded also means that should a person being monitored try to cover their tracks, there is a full record of their actions and even their attempt to hide what they have done.

Moreover, data that is deleted can often be recovered or can have a back up in an image or recording.

With these aspects combined, solid proof is generated of all user actions on a company device.

What Features Should be Included for Employee Forensic Investigations

To be an effective computer forensic tool for investigating employees, it is vital that the entire situation and all actions are monitored.

Veriato’s Investigator includes all of the following features to ensure that every employee action is fully tracked.

Video Playback

Records all computer screen activity. These recordings can be played back at convenience and used as evidence for civil and criminal litigation.

Website Activity

See exactly which websites are visited and what searches are performed. Even online social media activity is monitored. Every use is divided into categories and has detailed time tracking.

Email Recording

Records of each and every email that is sent or received from the device are kept. These include records of both corporate email and any webmail/online email services used.

Chat & IM

Keeps a full copy of all chats or instant messaging conversations. Recording both sides of any chats helps to create a complete picture.

File & Document Tracking

Monitor, record and alert file changes. This includes any that are edited, copied, or even printed. Recording what information is printed can be vital to security, despite being a low-tech technique for removing data.

Application Activity

Track every application use, whether they are installed or in the cloud.

Network Activity

See exactly how the network is used and by which applications.

Keystroke Logging

Capture every keystroke to have a complete picture of what is happening on all monitored devices.

The above technologies and approaches help to protect your business from unauthorized staff accessing customer records, propitiatory data, finances and more.

Use effective computer forensic tools to determine exactly what employees are or are not doing during work hours now that more employees are working remotely. Protect your business, regardless of where your staff is working.  Start your Free Trial today!