Three crucial aspects of operating a corporation are data and network security, regulatory compliance, and staff productivity. User activity monitoring (UAM) technologies are one strategy for achieving these objectives, but there are a few restrictions that you need to be aware of. Understanding user activity monitoring best practices and how they might benefit your company is crucial if you’re thinking about implementing these solutions.
What Is User Activity Monitoring?
User activity monitoring (UAM) technologies are software instruments that keep track of and monitor end-user activity on computers, networks, and other corporate IT assets. To identify and thwart insider risks, whether unintentional or maliciously motivated, many businesses deploy tools that monitor user activities. According to the company’s goals, different monitoring techniques may be used. With these useful data at their disposal, managers can identify each employee’s most productive hours in a workday and incorporate relevant schedule adjustments.
Workings of User Activity Monitoring
User activity monitoring is used to safeguard data while assuring its accessibility and compliance with information security and privacy laws. UAM does more than only keep track of network activity. Instead, it can track all user behavior, including their online browsing habits, access to sensitive or unauthorized data, and more. This includes all system, information, app, and network activities that users conduct.
There are numerous techniques used to keep track of and control user behavior, including:
- Sessions are captured on video.
- gathering and analysis of logs
- network packet analysis
- tracking keystrokes
- Kernel tracking
- the capture of files or screenshots
The Advantage of User Activity Monitoring
Large data sets can be gathered at any monitoring level. Finding and eliminating information that can be used to further data protection efforts should be the aim of any program for monitoring user behavior. You can recognize and look into questionable user behavior right away with the right procedures in place. The information gathered by user activity monitoring solutions needs to be examined for a number of things in order to be as valuable as possible, here are the things:
- Associated danger
- outlined guidelines
- Date and time
- individual context
Real-time identification and thorough reporting of past behavior are both beneficial. You need to know who did what, when, and where. Monitoring user behavior helps to spot abuse and lowers the possibility of inappropriate behavior that can result in malware attacks or data breaches. Additionally, it aids in lowering compliance costs and provides the intelligence required to enhance security measures.
Tools For Monitoring User Activity
A range of solutions is available that can be utilized to support or assist with user activity monitoring. These tools range from all-purpose security software programs to specialized tools made to monitor sessions and activity and produce a thorough audit trail for each user. Privileged account security solutions are another class of products that work to centralize policy management, and monitor, and protect privileged account activity.
Final Words
User activity Monitoring is a powerful method of monitoring users as they interact with your website. By collecting and collating user data, you can identify patterns of user behavior which is invaluable for designing a more engaging site. UAM may require some technical expertise to implement, but once the groundwork has been laid, its functions are easy to utilize.
