Business System Consultation Center - Our Business System ColumnVol.109 2021.01.01 Takahashi Minoru

We don't sell UTM devices, even if asked

Thank you for your interest and continued support.
This is Takahashi from the Marketing Plan Research Laboratory.


I heard this from an acquaintance who works in an office (he’s a creative professional).
Apparently, the company uses the following type of “employee monitoring software”:
・The software runs in the background on each employee’s laptop
・The software takes a “photo” at regular intervals and sends it to the supervisor
　　(It apparently takes these photos automatically using the laptop’s built-in camera)
・The software generates a daily report on laptop usage (including mouse and keyboard activity, and the names of open windows)
　　and automatically sends them to supervisors
・The supervisor checks the reports sent by the software every day
・The same software is installed on the supervisor’s computer


So, what happened as a result?
・A colleague skilled in programming created software to "fool the system"
・The images captured by the camera are automatically replaced with forged ones
・It automatically fabricates logs of mouse, keyboard, and screen operations
・That deception software became wildly popular among the rank-and-file employees
・Before we knew it, even the bosses started using the same deception software


It’s like a scene from a Lupin III movie where he outwits security.
Everyone is spending their work hours playing at being thieves.


To put it simply, the president (or the in-house IT specialist) thinks, “If I just install some software on the computers, monitoring will be a breeze.”
—that’s just naive.


You’d think you could tell whether someone’s work attitude is good or bad just by looking them in the eye.
It’s absolutely ridiculous that they’re cutting corners on a method meant to prevent slacking off.


That's all, Thank you for reading.

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