InfoWatch Activity Monitor

White Paper: DLP - Data Loss/Leak Prevention

2024

Inclusion in Softline Universe

Softline Group of Companies on October 28, 2024 announced the inclusion of the InfoWatch Activity Monitor employee action monitoring system in Softline Universe. With this integration, Softline Group of companies customers can improve IT security and prevent incidents by optimizing information security costs.

Softline Universe (SLU) is an ecosystem of closely integrated services, application and infrastructure software, hardware resources.

SLU is implemented as a subscription service and provides users with guaranteed working and pre-configured combinations of multi-vendor solutions. All products included in the SLU are domestic developments and are included in state registers. Customers can use the services of Softline Group of companies experts on system implementation, maintenance and technical support.

Softline Universe users will be able to timely detect suspicious actions of employees, analyze their behavior and promptly investigate information security incidents using the InfoWatch Activity Monitor. The implementation of the solution will allow companies to track access to critical data and assess the level of risk, quickly identify the sources of threats and take the necessary measures, and monitor compliance with security policies.

We are actively adding solutions to the Softline Universe ecosystem to protect against information security threats. We are glad that now among the products presented in Softline Universe there is InfoWatch Activity Monitor, which will help our customers to strengthen control over employee activity, optimize security processes and minimize the risks of accidental or deliberate data leakage, - commented Valentin Martynenko, information security architect of Softline Group of companies.

InfoWatch Activity Monitor is a system for monitoring personnel actions, which allows you to track the full picture of an employee's working day and his activity by a number of parameters. Among them are the use of atypical software and removable media, actions with folders and files, visiting websites and entering search queries, as well as all types of communications that an employee conducts during the working day through mail and instant messengers.

The partnership with Softline Group of companies opens up new opportunities for us to expand our presence and further long-term cooperation with customers during the implementation of comprehensive information security projects. We are confident that users will appreciate the convenience of interaction according to the "single window" principle and the speed of implementation of InfoWatch Activity Monitor within the Softline Universe, - said Sergey Kuzmin, Head of InfoWatch Investigation Center of InfoWatch Group of Companies.

ROSA Virtualization Compatibility

On April 4, 2024, InfoWatch and STC IT ROSA announced the successful completion of joint testing of their products: InfoWatch Activity Monitor and ROSA Virtualization.

This cooperation will allow our clients to ensure the safety and efficiency of work in a remote format, which is especially important in modern conditions of active use of remote technologies, - said Vyacheslav Kadomsky, Development Director of ROSA .

The use of InfoWatch Activity Monitor on virtual machines will allow companies to control discipline in the team, identify facts of inoperative activity and protect themselves from leaks of confidential information.

When using InfoWatch Activity Monitor, the company is able to control the access and use of confidential corporate information by employees. To do this, the monitoring system is installed directly on virtual machines and transmits information about inputs from working sessions, the use of applications and websites, as well as other actions of employees within the framework of a remote connection, - said Sergey Kuzmin, head of InfoWatch Employee Monitoring at InfoWatch Group.

{{quote 'These capabilities are relevant because the remote work format continues to be actively used in organizations, which complicates control over employee actions. The joint use of InfoWatch Activity Monitor and ROSA Virtualization solves this problem and, most importantly, through the introduction of Russian software, "said Andrey Arefiev, director of innovative projects at InfoWatch Group. }}

Voice Traffic Monitoring Function

As TAdviser found out, in the version of the product for investigating information security incidents and collecting the evidence base InfoWatch Activity Monitor 3.1, which will be released in June 2024, a function for translating audio into text will be available for all customers. As of April, the new feature is being actively piloted, TAdviser was told in InfoWatch. Earlier, from June 2023, audio recording from a microphone became available in Activity Monitor. Thus, it will now be possible to analyze the conversations of employees recorded and translated into text.

The solution is based on InfoWatch's own model, trained on the basis of open speech-to-text models.

When developing a solution, its control and data confidentiality were fundamentally important for us, so we analyze audio recordings without sending data to third-party services outside the company's perimeter. Also, the ability to analyze and process a large stream of audio data has been implemented, not all such solutions allow this, the company told TAdviser. - In the future, we plan to implement the ability to parse audio data into dialogues and breakdown by participants with the determination of gender and age, as well as search for certain marker words during analysis.

Previously, InfoWatch implemented the function of monitoring voice traffic in its solutions based on partner solutions. So, back in 2012, the company announced the integration of its DLP system with the speech technologies of the Center for Speech Technologies (CST), and in 2022 - the integration with the Lexicom Voice DLP software complex.

2022: InfoWatch Activity Monitor 2.0 release - separate product for monitoring personnel actions

InfoWatch Group announced on November 28, 2022 the release of InfoWatch Activity Monitor 2.0 as a standalone product. The solution is designed to monitor the actions of employees and control their activities behind the workstation. The InfoWatch Activity Monitor software product was previously a module of the InfoWatch Traffic Monitor DLP system and expanded its capabilities when investigating information security incidents. InfoWatch Activity Monitor 2.0 can now be used in conjunction with a DLP system or separately to monitor and analyze employee performance.

InfoWatch Activity Monitor 2.0 analyzes the activity of employees and builds statistics on their work in the sections of working and non-working activities, as well as applications used. Integrated with the access control system (MCDS) of the Russian manufacturer Perco, other corporate systems - for example, calendars. Provides the ability to fix the state of the monitor screen and record audio from the microphone. 

Among the actions that the system controls: input, output, blocking of the worker; computer use of applications and websites, monitoring of input text and web requests on Internet resources; actions files with and folders. Screen shots allow you to restore the picture of any incident, and INFORMATION SECURITY detailed information about the data use of a worker allows time you to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of personnel, including employees on. remote

The use cases of the system apply to business units - information security, IT, HR, as well as senior and middle managers. For example, using suspicious applications on workstations, identifying "dead souls" - employees who exist only on paper and do no work, publishing unwanted posts on social networks that are provocative for business, etc.

Information security incidents suffer direct and indirect losses that can become significant for the entire organization. Previously, InfoWatch Activity Monitor was used as an additional module of the flagship product - the InfoWatch Traffic Monitor DLP system, to enrich it with data on employee actions. However, when using this tool, customers began to use a solution to close other tasks that are not related to preventing leaks of confidential information. Feedback from customers using InfoWatch Activity Monitor in a wide variety of scenarios made it possible to take further steps to satisfy the market's request for solutions of this class. This product is necessary to improve business efficiency, reduce the cost of inefficiency and prevent risks from personnel actions. This is a mutual security tool that increases the level of employee literacy in the field of information security and reduces the risk of error, which will lead to undesirable consequences, noted Sergey Kuzmin, Head of InfoWatch Activity Monitor.

Like all company products, InfoWatch Activity Monitor 2.0 meets the tasks of building a technologically independent IT environment. Created "from scratch" by the Russian development team, it works on the main domestic operational systems. An important feature of this product is working on a single agent with the InfoWatch Traffic Monitor DLP system, and communicating with other InfoWatch products during joint installation. For example, InfoWatch Activity Monitor 2.0 data is visualized using the InfoWatch Vision module, and can also be used by InfoWatch Prediction to build predictive analytics and prevent security incidents.