Killing Time Electronically

Do you know if your employees are planning their next vacation, paying their bills online, or chatting with their friends about plans for the weekend? In many insurance agencies and brokerages, the answer to that question is “No.”

The Internet has grown to be as necessary within the work environment as a computer or a telephone; yet many insurance brokerages and carriers don’t have any tools in place to manage exactly how their employees are using the Internet. Of course, most employees are not driving to the office each morning thinking about how to waste time on the Internet. But it has grown to be an enormous distraction right at their fingertips, and time can quickly get away from them. An employee can sit down at his or her desk, check the weather forecast, look at the local news Web site, pay a few bills online, write a few e-mails to friends and, before he or she realizes it, it’s 10:00 am and no work has been done. Without having a policy in place and an Employee Internet Monitoring (EIM) solution implemented within the office, your organization is losing valuable productivity and putting the brokerage and insurance company at risk.

CONSEQUENCES OF KILLING TIME

America Online and Salary.com recently performed a study across various industries to determine the difference between how much time employees actually wasted at work and how much time management believed those employees were wasting. The study found that employees were wasting about twice as much time as the employers suspected, with non-work-related Internet use being the Number 1 distraction by an overwhelming margin. Results also showed the insurance industry ranked first in employee Internet abuse — at 1.1 hours per day per employee! In the United States, that amounted to an average of almost US$6,000 annually in lost productivity per employee because of personal Internet usage alone. Loss of productivity is one of the issues associated with EIM, but minimizing risks and threats to the organization is a key component as well.

Surfing the net increases the organization’s risks of being infected with viruses or spam; it also carries with it the threat of potential litigation. An EIM tool is not intended to replace your virus or anti-spam software, but it will drastically improve the overall protection of your network because the company will have the ability to block or restrict access to areas of the Internet where these threats reside. If employees have unrestricted access to the Internet connection, your agency or brokerage might also be exposed to various liabilities. As an example, a company in Arizona was fined more than US$1 million dollars because employees illegally downloaded music on their office computers. In another example, a company in New Jersey lost a lawsuit because it did not address issues with an employee viewing pornographic Web sites on the network. These risks and threats are real and need to be taken seriously. Other areas of abuse and potential risks come from your internal e-mail system (i. e. Exchange, Lotus Notes, etc.), personal e-mails (Web-mail) such as Yahoo!, Gmail, or Hotmail and Instant Messaging use.

One main concern about personal Web-mail usage is that it is hard to know how much an employee is using it and what is being communicated in those messages. Is an employee using those accounts to communicate with friends and family? Or could they be using their personal Web-mail account to send out client or proprietary information? There are numerous stories of organizations finding out that one of their employees was getting ready to leave the agency or brokerage and was communicating with a competitor or sending resumes from their personal accounts while being paid by their current employer. Without an EIM tool in place to monitor the quantity and content of these messages, or block the usage of these Web-mail tools altogether, this type of abuse can easily occur.

Instant Messaging use has also rapidly increased over the last few years, in part due to its ease of use and also because it is difficult for employers to monitor or record the activity. Instant Messaging protocols such as Yahoo!,AOL and MSN carry the same risks associated with e-mail abuse, but they have the additional negative potential of virus propagation. More than 40% of the top viruses can be received and sent through IM protocols; without an EIM solution to monitor or block IM, your brokerage may be at an elevated risk.

INTERNET MONITORING SOLUTIONS

Most carrier/brokerage owners or managers don’t want to be viewed as “Big Brother” and shut down the Internet completely from their employees. But to avoid the topic entirely is asking for trouble. The solution to this management dilemma is to implement a flexible EIM solution that fits your organization and creates the type of Internet culture you desire. One area of confusion often expressed relates to the difference between an EIM solution and the blocking capabilities that firewalls provide. Some firewalls allow for complete blocking of sites and non-browser-based applications (such as instant messaging software) for the entire organization. Complete blocking at the firewall level is often much too restrictive and difficult to manage in a dynamic business environment. A good EIM tool will give you the flexibility to allow access to certain sites, categories of sites, or non-browser-based applications at the individual, group or organization level, allowing employees with various job roles to have the proper levels of Internet access.

There are three main types of EIM tools: desktop software, server-based software and a network appliance.

Desktop software products are applications installed and maintained on every workstation within the organization. This type of solution usually carries a low initial implementation cost. However, this solution will become more difficult to manage as the organization grows and increases the number of its workstations. Reporting is generally done from the same computer on which the data is collected; as a result, it may be difficult to run reports on a particular employee while he or she is working. Lastly, software bugs and incompatibilities with agency-specific applications can pose problems with installation and management.

Server software products are applications loaded on a new or existing server attached and integrated into the network. This solution scales well for most businesses and allows for centralized management of all desktop clients and reporting. This solution might increase costs, however, due to the need for supporting hardware or software; software bugs and incompatibilities with

existing agency software applications might make implementation difficult. Also, this solution (as opposed to a network appliance solution) carries with it the risk of changing the performance of your network because there is a requirement for an underlying operating system.

Network appliance products include everything in a single unit. With a network appliance, such as iPrevision’s Panoptech device, there is no software to load on either a server or the individual workstations, nor is there a need for any additional hardware. This solution generally demonstrates the best performance because the hardware and software combination are dedicated to performing only those functions needed to optimally execute a unique set of tasks. Once installed, there is minimal technical management required. This type of solution scales extremely well for organizations of all sizes and provides centralized management and reporting. A network appliance can be so easy to use that it pushes the reporting and management of the carrier or broker’s Internet use to its proper place — i. e. owners and/or managers.

SUMMARY

The Internet is a necessary tool for all agencies and brokerages to run effectively, but many risks are associated with employees’ abuse of the Internet. Personal Internet usage should be a privil ege within an organization. In order to maximize corporate performance, owners or managers need an EIM solution in place to monitor and manage exactly how the Internet is — and should be — used.

The sensitive nature of Internet usage requires that any EIM solution implemented must provide management with the necessary tools to view Internet activity, whether at a corporate, managerial or individual level, in real time and within a secure environment.

The key question for any agency or brokerage is this: Can your insurance company or brokerage afford to pay each employee US$6,000 per year for non-productive Internet usage, or is it time to look at a solution?