Is it possible to monitor employee’s laptop while working from home?

I work on company's laptop. Can my company track time on it?

The situation
You work on a company's laptop. You have this laptop with you at home and in your business trips. And of course, you do not always work on it. When you do not work, you might want to use it for your personal needs, like browsing the Internet, accessing your online banking or your personal emails, chatting, playing games. This is all OK if you are done with your work duties for today. But there is a big concern that you have.

Your concerns
So, the concern is: you use company's laptop for your personal needs; can your company track time, Internet usage, software usage, basically anything on its laptop?

The answer
Yes, your company can track time, Internet usage, software and documents usage on its own laptop – see monitor laptop employees

At first, your company is legally allowed to do it.

Your company can technically track its laptop using third-party software in the following cases:

1. If at the moment when you receive your laptop there is software installed already. There already can be some time tracking software installed.
2. If you ever physically connect your laptop to the company's local network. When you login to your company's server, some software can be installed automatically; many companies have this process centralized. You might not even notice as installation can be "quiet".
3. If you ever connect to the company's network using VPN. This is just another way to connect to the company's local network. So, see the item 2.

Using time tracking software your company can record the following information:

1. Computer monitoring – Computer related activities – login, logout time, usage interval;
   
2. Software usage monitoring - software usage, documents accessed;
   
3. Internet monitoring – web-sites visited.
   
4. Time spent on each of these tasks.
   
5. User login names.


6. Screens, keystrokes, emails or chats content.

Your company cannot technically track its laptop using third-party software in the following case:
If you install only Microsoft software, if you do not install any company's or third-party software, if you connect to your company's work environment using Terminal Server, Citrix server, Remote Desktop or VNC connection – then it will be not possible to monitor your laptop using some third-party software.

Your company can monitor Internet usage with some hardware, if you use company's Internet access. Just in this case it is not possible to see time spent on each web-page.

NesterSoft Inc., Nov 06, 2009