by Leigh Goessl

Created on: September 04, 2009   Last Updated: March 27, 2011

The debate of whether or not employers should monitor their employees' Internet use in the workplace often provokes a lot of passion. One side of the fence feels companies should have the right to exert tight control over their assets. The flip side of the coin feels employees are entitled to privacy during the time they are on the web.

While both sides make good arguments, there are pros and cons to employee Internet monitoring. In addition, there are many ethical considerations for a company to think about when deciding whether or not they should go ahead and put monitoring software or hardware in place.

As technology evolves and higher levels of monitoring capabilities are introduced, managers literally have the ability at their fingertips to see what their employees are doing during the course of a workday. There are a lot of factors to weigh during the decision or whether or not employees should be monitored as they use the Internet.

Finding an acceptable balance is not always as easy as it may sound. Since the Internet has become such a prominent part of daily operations and the line between personal and work life has blurred, today's managerial decision makers are faced with unique challenges in the workplace that they've never had to think about before.

From an ethical standpoint, do employees have the right to monitor Internet activities in the workplace?

It can certainly be argued employers do have this right. Businesses have purchased the company computer equipment, pay to maintain networks and absorb all costs associated with maintaining technology. From this perspective it is believed businesses should have the right to protect their assets.

Additionally the risk of malware such as viruses, worms, Trojans and spyware has increased significantly, not to mention the problem of spam cluttering up mailboxes and taking up bandwidth. By keeping a tighter control on employee Internet use, an additional layer of protection can be created in an attempt to ensure company networks, or even individual desktops, are not infected with malicious code. Any infection could seriously impact company technology and potentially knock the company offline or compromise confidential or proprietary data. In addition to the risks of breach, it is costly in terms of time and resources to fix problems.

On the flip side of the argument employees are certainly entitled to breaks, lunch hours or other designated times where they are not on the clock, but in the building. Shouldn't

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