Spytech Software and Design is the manufacturer of Spytech NetVizor. The application receives the TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award in our employee monitoring software review because of its comprehensive surveillance, reporting and remote system administration features. However, unlike Spector CNE Investigator the application lacks the ability to create URL black and white lists. Sonar, our highest ranked product, has superior content blocking, filtering, and computer access scheduling capabilities.
Formed in 1998, Minnesota-based Spytech Software and Design focuses most of its development and research efforts on security, surveillance and monitoring software solutions. Targeted for business owners, Spytech NetVizor is one of the company's flagship products and can effectively monitor employees. The company also produces monitoring software for the home user.
Propelling Spytech NetVizor past the majority of its competition is the employee monitoring software's ease of use. The app's configuration wizard steps the computer administrator through the app's installation and deployment.
On a local area network, remote deployment of the employee monitoring software's client app can occur with the simple click of a mouse. Alternately, the network administrator can choose to install the employee monitoring software by physically accessing the target computer.
Managers can customize the software to their own individual preferences. Customizable configurations include Localized Log Storage, Centralized Log Storage, Centralized Monitoring of Multiple Network Subnets, Roving User Tracking and Centralized Remote Administration.
Each of the above settings can be optimized for both system and network performance. Localized log storage requires less bandwidth than the centralized log repository. However, this method lacks the ability to monitor employees who are roving users.
The application lists all computers on the local network and its console type viewer allows managers to monitor employees from one centralized location. The tracking of roving users is an innovative feature of Spytech NetVizor. The software can log the activities of users who must access multiple workstations to complete their job duties.
In the Centralized Log Storage method, the software stores the collected data by username. Supervisors can view a worker's activities regardless of the actual system they accessed.
Spytech NetVizor comes equipped with powerful online monitoring features. The application tracks all website visits and online searches. Supported browsers include Internet Explorer, Firefox and others. The app categorizes the collected data by website address, duration of visit, frequency and username.
The employee monitoring software also has strong email monitoring components. It can capture all email exchanges sent and received through SMPT and POP3. Moreover, the software accurately records webmail correspondences sent through webmail providers such as MySpace, Facebook, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and others. Some products claim to support webmail exchanges but deliver intermittent results. Our testing confirmed that Spytech NetVizor does consistently record these types of communications and has reliable email monitoring capabilities.
Frequently, employees can waste time chatting with friends and coworkers online. Supervisors can intercept the transcripts of chat and instant messaging conversations. Spytech NetVizor is compatible with AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Skype, ICQ and other instant message and chat applications.
The software tracks all uploaded and downloaded files. Detailed file transfer information includes content type, origination of download, time, date, file size and more. Additional online surveillance tools include the monitoring of all internet connections, internet traffic data, FTP sessions and bandwidth utilization.
Spytech NetVizor has comprehensive computer tracking and management capabilities. Supervisors can view saved reports of their employee's computer and online activities, or watch remotely as they occur in real time.
Employee productivity is often the deciding factor surrounding a business's success. The software's Computer Usage Logging feature can identify those employees who are actively working on assigned tasks. The feature logs the start and ending of each computer session. Additional captured information includes how long the employee was actively working.
The application logs all instances of user-launched applications. Additionally, Spytech NetVizor can safeguard a company's trade secrets and intellectual property. The software logs all instances of opened, viewed, printed, modified, transferred, copied and deleted files.
A rogue installation of unlicensed software has cost more than one thriving business their profit margin. This employee monitoring software records all user application installations. Additionally, managers can perform remote security audits, inspect the file system and even perform a remote system lockdown. Other remote commands include rebooting, freezing, terminating system processes and more.
The app's keylogger captures all keyboard strokes. This information can contain usernames, passwords, account names and more.
One potential drawback of the keylogger is that in addition to collecting confidential business information, the app can also record an employee's personal sensitive data. Managers may want to consider warning their workers about the app's logging capabilities and discourage them from engaging in online banking or other personal online activities while using company owned computers.
The Keylogger's collected data is easy to find and review. The app sorts the information by username and window name.
Managers can customize how frequently the app captures images of the employee's desktop. Spytech NetVizor's screenshot-viewer makes the reviewing of all collected images an uncomplicated task.
The application comes equipped with robust blocking, filtering and alerting tools. Spytech NetVizor can prevent employees from accessing specified websites. The application filters and blocks websites by URL or keyword.
Managers can prevent their employee's from executing specified software. Blocked software can include media players, games, chat and instant messengers, and other unwanted applications.
The software's portable drive blocking feature prevents employees from copying or transferring digital company properties to portable hard drives or other external media.
Spytech NetVizor can alert a manager to an employee's misbehavior. The software can send a notifying alert when an employee attempts to execute and unwanted application, connects a portable drive, or attempts to modify a specified file. Other alerts are easily customized and implemented.
The employee monitoring software has comprehensive report generation capabilities. Reports are available for individual computers and network-wide. Built-in reports include Network-wide Activity Overview, Top 10 Email Senders and Recipients, Top 10 Applications Used, Top 10 Websites Visited, Individual Log Summaries, Bandwidth Usage and a host of others.
Spytech NetVizor is an advanced employee monitoring software solution. Numerous filtering, blocking, logging and remote management capabilities combine to assist a business in protecting their digital assets and trade secrets as well as monitoring their workforce.
