Facebook addicts who log on during work, beware. Revolutionary software previously restricted mainly to police forces and corporations is now available to small and medium-sized businesses.
The monitoring and audit system (MAS), itself the product of a small business – 3ami, which has ten staff – will let your boss know exactly how much time you spend on social networks when you are supposed to be working. It will record every keystroke, search and document printed or stored.
But the impetus behind the wider marketing of MAS is more serious – the implementation from Friday of the Bribery Act.
Businesses of all sizes will be liable if any of their employees or an agent pays a bribe anywhere in the world.
The one sure defence is that the business concerned took every possible step to ensure its staff played fair. The wide-ranging monitoring provided by 3ami would help in such cases.
"The implementation of the Act has led to interest from private sector companies, particularly those operating internationally." says Tim Ellsmore, managing director of 3ami, based in Skelmersdale, Lancashire. "They are keen to protect their senior staff from the charge of "failure to prevent bribery."
MAS had its origins eight years ago when Ellsmore worked as an internet security consultant and IT project manager.
Talking to one police force about firewalls and other conventional defences, he was told that it was more concerned about what was going out than what was coming in.
Unable to find the sort of software needed, Ellsmore says: 'We took a risk and developed our own solution.'
Now a system designed to combat police corruption has a range of new applications and not only in terms of the Bribery Act.
A 3ami spokesman says: 'With more companies going insolvent, MAS can prevent valuable information being sent out of a troubled business.'
More practically, in the current climate of austerity, MAS can tell managers which workstations, laptops and mobile devices are rarely used, or overused, saving on expensive software licensing requirements as the MAS records usage and productivity of an organisation's software base.
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