What does User Activity Monitoring mean?

User Activity Monitoring (UAM) solutions are software tools that essentially track, monitor and alert on the activity and overall behavior of your users. The most common application of user activity monitoring tools is in the detection and prevention of insider threats.

The simple fact is that your users are the most likely source of a data breach in your organization (whether through negligence or malice) so they must be monitored.

Through the implementation of user activity monitoring solutions, enterprises can reduce the amount of time it takes to identify anomalous user behavior and take reparative action.

How does User Activity Monitoring work?

The purpose of user activity monitoring is to protect information while ensuring availability and compliance with data privacy and security regulations. UAM goes beyond simply monitoring network activity. Instead, it can monitor all types of user activity, including all system, data, application and network actions that users take, such as their web browsing activity, whether users are accessing unauthorized or sensitive files and more.
There are various methods implemented to monitor and manage user activity such as:

• Video recordings of sessions
• Log collection and analysis
• Network packet inspection
• Keystroke logging
• Kernel monitoring
• File/screenshot capturing

All of the information gathered must be looked at within the boundaries of company policy and the user role to figure out if inappropriate activity is in play. What constitutes “inappropriate user activity” is up to the company deploying the UAM solution, and can include anything from visiting personal sites or shopping during work hours to theft of sensitive company data such as intellectual property or financial information.

What are the Benefits of User Activity Monitoring?

Any level of monitoring can accumulate large amounts of data. The goal of any user activity monitoring program should be to find and filter out actionable information that’s valuable in data protection efforts. With effective processes in place, you can immediately detect and investigate suspicious user activity. You can also find out if users are uploading sensitive data to public clouds, utilizing non-approved services and applications or engaging in any other type of risky activity while using the company network or resources. User activity monitoring tools are also helpful in ensuring that employees do not take any of your company's confidential information when they are leaving the company.

In order to make the data collected by user activity monitoring solutions as useful as possible, that data must be analyzed for several items, including:

• Associated risk
• Defined policies
• Time of day
• Identity context

It also helps to have real-time identification along with detailed reporting of historical activity. Questions to answer are: Who did what, when and where? User activity monitoring helps to identify abuse to help reduce the risk of inappropriate actions that can lead to malware infections or data breaches. It also helps to decrease the cost of compliance, while offering intelligence needed to improve security measures.