New Tool for Monitoring Employee Behavior

Business and IT executives looking to drive bottlenecks out of business processes and uncover security threats in their environments might want to check out a product that promises to map a company's organizational network and provide analysis as to how it can be optimized.

ETelemetry plans to introduce its Metron EBA (Enterprise Behavior Analysis) appliance to attendees at the Interop conference and exposition, which gets underway May 20 in Las Vegas.

The product is an extension of the company's Metron appliance, which matches IP addresses to end user names. Metron EBA can provide business and IT executives with a map of who talks to whom in the organization and via what communications method -- for instance, e-mail, instant message or Internet. Dubbed “organizational network analysis,” the technology in Metron EBA can help managers reengineer business processes or spot anomalous employee behavior that may represent a threat to the company, eTelemetry executives say.

"Metron EBA can show how people communicate within an organization and if they are doing so effectively and efficiently," says Ermis Sfakiyanudis, eTelemetry president and CEO.

The appliance sits on the network, takes a snapshot of its users and passively monitors traffic, tracking various modes of communication such as data, voice, e-mail or IM. Metron EBA can then display which employees or groups of employees interact the most and how it relates to business productivity. For instance, one employee may be connected to several groups and serve as an unofficial liaison, unbeknownst to upper management.

"Executives might not realize losing that person could impact multiple departments, or they may want to be sure to capture the intellectual property of that employee before it's lost," Sfakiyanudis says.

Metron EBA also could be used to optimize business processes, conveying which groups of people work together and what it makes sense for them to work on at any given time. In addition, the product could indicate if an employee is using different communications or speaking with people outside of the normal behavior -- which could indicate malicious behavior, Sfakiyanudis explains.

Metron EBA is priced at about US$50,000, which includes the hardware, software and 2,000 licenses.