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News08/25/2011
Version 3.8 released
03/04/2011
Version 3.6 released
11/23/2010
Version 3.4 released
08/16/2010
Version 3.3 released
04/19/2010
Version 3.2 released
03/05/2010
Standard 3.1 released
12/22/2009
Standard 3.0 released
07/31/2009
Standard 2.8 released
04/03/2009
Standard 2.6 released
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Interview about LanAgentThe employer has the right to require that employees do not spend the company's resources on their personal needsLanAgent is a program used to stealthily monitor computers on a local area network and designed to control users' activities. Today the director of the NetworkProfi company answers questions about this program. Andrew, why did you become interested in observation of employees? Probably, it was caused by your own personal experience, for example? The term “Observation” is not quite correct here because the main purpose of our program is not observation, but protection against internal threats. Actually, I got interested in this issue quite accidentally. In the course of my activities, I had a lot of business with large companies and the heads of their departments often asked me to choose or write a program that would allow them to determine leaks of important information and also increase the effectiveness of using business hours. So, initially it was a custom product and only after that we came up with an off-the-shelf product. What categories of users is LanAgent intended for? The program is primarily intended for corporate customers. It is intended for small and medium businesses, for companies that have local area networks up to several hundreds of computers. In companies, the program will be interesting for information security specialists, directors and system administrators. Besides, it will be also useful for usual users that have a home network, for example, for parents that have several computers in their apartment. As a rule, they use it to control their children. How much time is it needed to analyze log files when LanAgent is used in a large company? How much space do log files occupy on users' hard disks? Can users detect the program if they find its logs? The amount of time needed to analyze obtained statistics (logs) depends a lot on its amount and may take several minutes. Space that logs occupy on users' hard disks directly depends on how intensively the computer is used. The following issue is also important here: the program has client-server architecture. The server part of the program (administrator part) is installed on the administrator's computer while agents are installed on users' computers. In the end, the entire information is sent to the database on the administrator's computer and logs are deleted from users' computers. It is up to the administrator of the program how often it happens. He can either manually make the program get logs from agents or configure it to get logs automatically, for example, each hour. In this case, logs will be accumulated on users' computers for one hour and then they will be sent to the database on the administrator's computer. So, it will not be more than several megabytes within an hours and this is true if we take into account screenshots that they take more than half the size of log files. Now as to whether users can detect the program... Actually, I would like to point out right away that there is no program that can be hidden with a 100% guarantee, there is always a chance that it will be detected. But I can say for sure that it is very difficult to do it with standard means. So, if users do not know beforehand that there is an agent installed on their computers, the chance that they find either the program or its logs is very little. Does the program allow you to set the priority for the events it monitors (for example, operations with secret documents have a higher priority)? Currently, the program does not have such a feature. All operations with any objects (applications, files, visited sites) have the same priority. In future, we plan to add the system of filtering events. For example, the administrator will be able to specify which applications, sites, etc. should be considered as potentially dangerous. The program will filter the contents of e-mail messages and websites and determine the priority level. What if an employee sends company's secret data by e-mail - the company's security department should be informed about it in proper time. Does the program allow you to divide users into groups and log different activities for different groups of users? Yes, it is possible to divide user into groups in the program. And it is possible to specify different settings for different groups. For example, you have an accounting department where the Internet is not used. In this case, you can disable all types of monitoring related to the Internet for this group. Actually, it is possible to specify individual settings for each user. For what purposes can the feature of sending message to users' computers by the administrator be used? This feature can be used if the administrator wants to warn a user. If the user knows that the program is installed on the computer and he violates some security policies, while the administrator sees his activity and considers it dangerous, he can send a warning to the user or some other text message that he will find appropriate. Most probably, the administrator has other means to contact the user as well, but we decided to add this feature to the program just in case. Is there any data concerning the effectiveness of using this program in companies? What can a person who decides to control their employees with LanAgent expect - do you have this kind of statistics? Yes, we do. More than half of our customers have made sure that their employees are only half-occupied with work because they have enough time to play computer games, chat, view entertainment sites while doing their jobs. Our experience shows that persons in charge just give additional tasks to such employees. Also, there were some cases when the company's security policy has been violated. It happened when employees sent sensitive information by e-mail without having a clue what consequences it may have for the company. As to the effect expected from the deployment of LanAgent, in the first place, it is increasing the effectiveness of using business hours, preventing leaks of important information, preventing attempts of unauthorized negotiations with competitors. It should be kept in mind that LanAgent is a tool and the rest is up to you. Do you think that employers have the right to require that employees use computers and the Internet only for business purposes? I think that the answer to this question is obvious: yes, they do. If an employer employs a person, gives this person resources, he has the right to require that the employee spends these resources not on his personal needs, but on achieving the company's goals. But another question is not less important: can an employer monitor an employee? Employees and their bosses will always differ on this question. Such issues as employees' carelessness and information leaks are quite pressing in some companies and their directors have to fight against them. As a rule, the Internet, ICQ, etc. are needed for work so it is impossible to just forbid using these things so the only thing left is monitoring and explanatory conversations with the staff. We do not suggest that our customers hide the fact of monitoring their staff's activities. As to the legal side of the problem, we suggest that employers include information similar to this (http://www.lanagent.com/rules.doc) in their contracts with employees or give this information as a separate document.
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TestimonialsA.N. Fedoseev.
Director General "West Siberia Marketing Center":
The program is very comfortable and easy to use. LanAgent allows you to monitor all user activity on a computer, which provides the full picture of the user's workday. The intuitive interface is successfully combined with a wide range of features... Maria Evgenyevna Sidorova.
Information Security Specialist GOU VPO TyumGMA of Roszdrav:
Nowadays no one has any doubts about the necessity of ensuring the security for information resource in a organization or company. The commonly used approach to this process implies examining the system, auditing the state of information security, developing a new security policy or correcting the existing one. It is convenient if you can do most of these things with one software suite. LanAgent has been working well with 300 workstations, which proves the good scalability of this software. We should particularly mention special features offered by LanAgent, such as ... Vladimir Grigorievich Lim.
PhD in Technical Sciences, Assistant Professor of the Department of Informational Systems and Information Protection
of Astrakhan State University:
LanAgent became one of the key tools for me and for our department. Remote control tools allows you to install monitoring tools on the computer invisibly for the network user and then invisibly monitor the user's activity. We should say that LanAgent is not the only monitoring tool that we tested. The use of these tools ... |
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Employee Activity Monitoring
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