Employee Tracking Program
Governments want to avoid Snowden incidents for obvious reasons. But how do you crackdown on something that was supposed to already be locked down? If you're running the U.S. Army, you take drastic measures, that's how.
The U.S. Army is creating a new internal network called ‘Army Network 2020' that makes it impossible for anyone to leak highly secure documents. If, by some change, a person tries to download or send out classified documents, the system sends out an alert.
Employee Tracking Program: Who Is Being Watched
The Army considers any soldier that has just joined the ranks or is leaving the Army to be a risk. These people are more likely to look for classified information. That's why Army Network 2020 will be watching new recruits and soldiers about to retire very closely. However, the system won't be implemented quite yet.
It's going to take roughly 7 years for the Army Network 2020 system to launch, but it has been in the works since last November when President Obama initiated the program. The point of the program is to avoid any future incidents like the one that Edward Snowden has created.
Employee Tracking Program: What the System Tracks
In addition to alerting higher ups when classified information has been downloaded or distributed, this system will also track how many emails a person sends; how much information is downloaded daily; and a bunch of other details. In short, this system was built and designed to keep a very close eye on what happens within the walls of the U.S. Army.
The Army also hosts all of its websites very securely, so this is just an extra measure to make sure that web hosting plus employee tracking is in line. This may sound really extreme, but it's also a measure that the Army has to take to ensure security. There are, after all, two sides to the Snowden coin.
Tracking Your Employees
Should you take a page from the Army and set up a similar security system within your company? It all depends on how secure you want your company to be. If you have a lot of highly classified files that you want to remain in-house, it might not be a bad thing to keep your employees on a tight leash.
Can you build out a system that's as technical as the one the Army is working on? You can probably find programmers to do this kind of work, but it's not going to be cheap. Then again, in the long run, spending money now to see how it pays out later is always a good idea. You will be required your employees to sign a contract/waiver before monitoring every movement, though, so do keep this in mind.
It's also a good idea to make sure that your web hosting site is extremely secure. We've talked about cloud hosting options that include splitting keys, and we have covered many other security options on this blog, so do take a look at those articles.
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