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Employee Monitoring.  Please respond to the following:

• Take a position on the ethical concerns raised by employees who are upset about organizations monitoring their email or Internet access for security purposes. Assess whether you believe it is fair for an employee to undergo this type of surveillance.
• Suggest an alternative approach for an organization to control security without monitoring employee actions. 

Classmates:

Employee Monitoring.  Please respond to the following:

Take a position on the ethical concerns raised by employees who are upset about organizations monitoring their email or Internet access for security purposes. Assess whether you believe it is fair for an employee to undergo this type of surveillance.

The law in this area has pretty much been settled. Employees have no privacy rights in their e-mail and Internet use, and Federal law does not prohibit employers from monitoring that use. From an ethics standpoint, I can see where some employees could be confused, especially if the policy has not been communicated properly. Monitoring employee e-mail usage should take all necessary steps to eliminate expectation of privacy concerning their use of company e-mail and accessing the Internet. Proper policy should be established and communicated with each employee. There should also be annual refresher training established on email and Internet usage, and should delineate what are and what are not permissible uses of the Internet and e-mail at the workplace and should clearly detail what personal use of those services will be allowed, if any. With proper monitoring, the benefits include Higher Employee Productivity, increased security and ensuring proper use of Internet, which can lead to legal liability in more ways than one.

Suggest an alternative approach for an organization to control security without monitoring employee actions. 

Employers can take another approach to monitoring, that would be placing strict limitations on what can be accessed on the internet and who can send emails or what emails can be received. Internet access can be limited through number of different software options, such as OpenDNS, ContentWatch, ScanSafe and SonicWall and/or filters that restricts the Internet websites the company deems inappropriate. (Stallings 569) In order to do this, you will need to setup as administrator on each computer. Once this has been implemented, this can be entrusted to the administrator of your corporate network with whom you choose to put filters in place, should also allow a way for employees to request access or lift the restriction to a particular site allowing the administrator the ability to ensure that site is safe and appropriate. Some filters commonly used:

• URL: Banning of certain internet addresses
• File types: Filtering out the download of certain files (eg video, music, etc.), to limit the possibility of attacks and viruses on the network and helps manage bandwidth.

Reference:

Stallings, William. Business Data Communications, 6th Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions, 10/2008. VitalBook file.