Monitoring employee behavior in digital environments is on the rise, with 60% of corporations expected to implement formal programs for monitoring external social media for security breaches and incidents by 2015, according to Gartner, Inc., an information technology research and advisory company.

“The growth in monitoring employee behavior in digital environments is increasingly enabled by new technology and services,” said Andrew Walls, research vice president of Gartner. “Surveillance of individuals, however, can both mitigate and create risk, which must be managed carefully to comply with ethical and legal standards.”

Many organizations already engage in social media monitoring as part of brand management and marketing, but less than 10%of organizations currently use these same techniques as part of their security monitoring program.

To prevent, detect and remediate security incidents, IT security organizations have traditionally focused attention on the monitoring of internal infrastructure. The impact of IT consumerization, cloud services and social media renders this traditional approach inadequate for guiding decisions regarding the security of enterprise information and work processes. 

The popularity of consumer cloud services, such as Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, provides new targets for security monitoring, but surveillance of user activity in these services generates additional ethical and legal risks. There are times when the information available can assist in risk mitigation for an organization, such as employees posting videos of inappropriate activities within corporate facilities. However, there are other times when accessing the information can generate serious liabilities, such as a manager reviewing an employee’s Facebook profile to determine the employee’s religion or sexual orientation in violation of equal employment opportunity and privacy regulations. 

“The conflicts involved were highlighted through recent examples of a small number of organizations requesting Facebook login information from job candidates,” said Walls. “Although that particular practice will gradually fade, employers will continue to pursue greater visibility of social media conversations held by employees, customers and the general public when the topics are of interest to the corporation.”

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar announced earlier this month that she would cosponsor federal legislation to prohibit an employer from requiring that a current or potential employee turn over the password to a Facebook or other private online account, according to a press release.

“This is about the right to privacy,” Klobuchar said.  “No person should be forced to reveal their private online communications just to get a job.  This is another example of making sure our laws keep up with advances in technology and that fundamental values like the right to privacy are protected.”

Klobuchar is working on legislation with Senate colleagues Chuck Schumer of New York and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. The Password Protection Act would prohibit employers from coercing job applicants or current employees to provide access to their private online systems, including Facebook, e-mail and other online storage.

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