Information Technology Business Analysis


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Information Technology Business Analysis

Information Technology Business Analysis

New technology enables employers to monitor employees more efficiently than ever possible in the past. This has created new challenges regarding privacy, employees’ constitutional rights and the rights of an employer to secure and monitor their workforce. Technologists and managers must be aware of laws and case studies that may affect their right to monitor.

Monitor Employees

Information technology (IT) professionals are often asked to install monitoring equipment or software to monitor employees. The purpose of this may be to verify that an employee is violating policy or the law. It may also be used to maintain the health of the systems or network through network sniffers and monitors.

Expectation of Privacy

Use of electronic surveillance of content is limited by United States Code 2510, Title 18, Chapter 119, otherwise known as the Wire and Electronic Communication and Interception of Oral Communications Act. This act serves to protect the privacy of wire and oral communications and to set standards and conditions on when interception can be authorize. Typically, employers are within their rights to monitor phone calls, website usage, email, and voice mail but each situation is unique and IT professionals should always make sure that they are acting in accordance with the law.

Electronic Privacy

While businesses may assume that they have a right to monitor any communication that takes place on their equipment, there are exceptions to the waiver of rights to electronic privacy. In reviewing Lara Curto vs. Medical World Communications, Inc. et al for the Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions, Martin Sampson wrote that the courts ruled that employee’s use of a company-owned computer did not constitute a waiver of her expectation to privacy regardless of the company’s policy. The two key points to this ruling were that the employee took action to remove the files and communications from the computer and that the company rarely enforced its computer use policy.