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Screenshots and keystrokes recording might harm your business
Screenshots and keystrokes monitoring has become a widely used
functionality for almost every software on the market.
The question, however, is whether or not it’s safe for your business?
The reality is that potential hazards lurk behind screenshots and keystrokes recording.
Software that records keystrokes or screenshots can compromise data security and invade privacy. Consequently leading to legal issues, loss of clients, and damage to your reputation.
Take a look at how these features could potentially harm your business from two real-life examples.
Web banking details revealed
The banking details of a top Canadian manager were unintentionally revealed. The incident occurred when the company’s IT team tried connecting to every company computer remotely to solve an emergency virus problem. The urgency in this situation resulted in screenshots of confidential banking information being inadvertently leaked. And this happened in a matter of seconds. While this happened very quickly, the manager was obviously not pleased with the situation. Thankfully, no legal action was taken since it was an accident. Now imagine what happens if you take screenshots regularly.
In the case of screenshots and keylogging monitoring software, the risk is much higher. Confidential data such as web banking details, health information, or anything considered sensitive can be stored and easily accessed at any time.
Confidential data, such as web banking details or health information might be exposed.
$90,000 stolen from banking account
A Florida businessman filed a suit against Bank of America after unknown hackers gained unauthorized access into his account and stole $90,000. An investigation found that his computer had been infected with malicious software that captures screenshots, records every keystroke, and sends this information to malicious users over the Internet. The hackers got hold of his username and password, and the rest is history.
Now think about it for a second,
The problem here is similar to the first example; imagine recording keystrokes, capturing screenshots, and storing them daily in the database.
Here are factors to consider:
How excellent is your data protection?
How well are your employees trained to handle sensitive data?
What are the chances that a disgruntled employee may steal confidential information resulting in security breaches and data leaks?
These are fundamental questions to consider because the repercussion may include legal issues, loss of clients, and damage to your reputation.
Security breaches may cause confidential data leakage. The consequences could be legal issues, loss of clients, and damage to your reputation.
7 ways your business can be affected
- Leaked confidential information
- Invasion of privacy
- Data security problems
- Incompatible with HIPPA environment
- Criminal intent
- Micro-management
- Problems with antivirus
Screenshots and keystroke recordings can capture confidential information such as banking details, private passwords, personal emails, sensitive screen content, and even deleted information. And no matter how good the masking algorithms are, you will never be able to hide all sensitive data obtained from the recording.
This type of monitoring can infringe on privacy and affect morale in the workplace.
Software that records keystrokes or screenshots can compromise data security by allowing unauthorized persons to obtain login data such as passwords, which can be used to access even more private data.
Monitoring software with features such as screenshot capture and keystroke recording is not compliant with HIPAA because HIPAA deals with protected health information.
Any keystroke or screenshots monitoring device or software can be extensively used with malicious or criminal intent, especially in an unsafe environment.
The use of these features could lead to micro-managing employees. ( micromanagement can harm productivity)
Antivirus software does its best to detect and block malicious software on a computer. Keystrokes and screenshots features might interfere with an antivirus, preventing the monitoring software from operating properly.
Conclusion
As you can already tell, these features may be considered too invasive, and the aftermath of such monitoring are potential data breaches and legal risks.
If this is not what you want for your business, we recommend implementing monitoring software void of “invasive” features unless your line of work requires screenshots and keystrokes for investigative purposes.
