InterGuard, which starts at $9.00 per user per month, is a comprehensive, cloud-hosted employee monitoring solution.
A long-time player in the space, InterGuard has now improved its user interface while refining its multi-point employee monitoring features.
InterGuard includes various solutions for employee monitoring through recording user activity within and off the corporate network.
This makes it an effective solution overall, though one that's held back a bit by its price and a slight feature disadvantage to Editors' Choice winners, Teramind and Veriato Cerebral.
Aside from logging information like screenshots and keystrokes, InterGuard also generates data that can be analyzed and indexed for alerts, playback, audit trails, and even behavioral benchmarking.
Its activity monitoring ranges across desktop and mobile, and its list of add-ons cover everything from laptop theft to data loss prevention (DLP).
Like most companies in the monitoring and time tracking segment, the sudden move to remote work has brought it a heap of new customer feature requests and engagements now that so many companies' employees are out of the office.
InterGuard has aimed to satisfy these needs with a suite of remote monitoring solutions that include email monitoring, website monitoring (and blocking), IM and chat monitoring, program monitoring and blocking, file tracking, idle versus active time tracking, screenshot monitoring, key logging, and even endpoint lockdown features.
InterGuard Pricing
InterGuard's pricing is layered and involves different subscription modules as well as per-license costs, with discounts based on volume pricing.
The cloud hosted subscription begins at $9.00 per user per month (with an annual contract of 11+ users).
This requires no hardware and can be instantly deployed.
It also offers a stealth mode option so employees are unaware they are being tracked, as well as 24/7 support.
The Enterprise On-Premise version can be installed in a businesses' data center and requires an SQL Server, it will Integrate with Active Directory, and is compatible with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) frameworks, like those from Citrix.
It also comes with 24/7 chat support.
InterGuard can monitor PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, Android, and iOS devices.
Monthly subscription plans start at $25 per user per month but for a minimum of five users per month.
A 10-user pack costs $20.00 per user per month, a 25-user pack costs $12.00 per user per month, and a 50-user pack will set you back $10.00 per user per month.
Things get pricier if you're looking for deeper features.
For a more comprehensive employee monitoring (i.e.
the components you will need to make this solution work), businesses will need to add on the Employee Monitoring for PC subscription.
This costs $156 per license for between 2-10 licenses, $108 per license for 11-25 licenses, and anything above 36 licenses will require a special quote.
Employee Monitoring for PC gives you access to Record & Control all PC activity.
You'll also be able to record email, instant messages, and web activity as well as capture screenshots and monitor or block all programs.
The Keylogger feature is available upon request at no additional charge.
So, while InterGuard's pricing is somewhat flexible to fit exactly the features and capabilities you need, it can get a bit confusing depending on the plans, add-ons, and deployment options you choose and those options can also cause your end price to rise sharply.
Smaller businesses might be put off when they find their needs or number of licenses don't synch within the available tiers.
Also, adding subscriptions and services as your company's needs grow will drive up costs significantly.
The pricing model and approach makes it clear that InterGuard is an enterprise solution.
InterGuard provides a return on investment (ROI) calculator to help enterprises calculate annual savings in reducing employee time waste through InterGuard.
Setup and Installation
Setting up InterGuard requires completing various steps.
On the test machine I used to simulate a monitored employee's computer, I had to log into my InterGuard administrator account and go to Settings Download & Licensing Options and download the agent to begin the installation process.
InterGuard provided instructions for this, and once downloaded, an installer window opened with additional instructions and installation tips.
The installation process itself went through the installer wizard without any hitches, completing the successful agent install within a few minutes.
Once completed, InterGuard prompts the admin to check a box to delete the installer files and browsing history and commence an automatic restart in order to hand over a machine to the employee with no trace that monitoring software has been installed.
However, many installations will require one last step, which is an antivirus exclusion.
This is because I hadn't initially set the antivirus exclusion.
InterGuard's software is blocked by default by most antivirus providers, possibly because of the key logging feature which is considered as malware by these security solutions.
Restarting the PC, I began opening websites and applications on my test machine to see how quickly InterGuard began pulling in data.
Unlike Teramind, which immediately started populating its dashboards and reports with real-time data, In the Help section on the InterGuard admin dashboard, the company provides instructions for how to manually disable this in Ad-Aware, Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, Eset, Kaspersky, McAfee, Norton, Symantec, Trend Micro, Vipre, and Windows Defender Security Center.
We tested InterGuard on a Windows 10 machine, and had to turn off real-time protection and then add a folder exclusion for the InterGuard software before the installation reset, which as earlier mentioned, deletes the installer files and makes the monitoring agent completely stealth on the machine.
The folder path was difficult to find manually, even with the Windows 10-specific instructions.
If you don't set the antivirus exclusion before you complete the installation, then that machine's monitoring data will not update in InterGuard.
Overall, this was far more of a hassle than installing the Teramind agent, and speaks to the deeper compatibility issues of getting older tools such as InterGuard and Veriato Cerebral up and running compared to newer tools which require fewer steps to set up.
Improved UI turns Data into Information
InterGuard’s user interface is improved over the previous version we tested and now makes better use of screen real estate while making its best features more accessible.
It is also better organized and gives users six different dashboard views based on what they need to monitor.
For managers that need to spend hours poring over this employee productivity data, the new look and feel and deeper organization helps them find data faster.
Chart View is a panoramic birds-eye view of the most important charts.
With over 60 pre-set charts to choose from, these can easily be changed or moved around via an add/edit button on the top right corner.
This view can give managers insights into trends or quickly spot potential issues.
Managers in charge of remote workers can select productivity charts to see how their teams are doing, regardless of their location.
Some examples of these charts are Productive Activity by User, Most Productive Users, Least Productive Users, and Unproductive Activity by User.
If you need more more information on a specific user, you can shift to User View, which allows you to scroll through team members and quickly see who is currently working or not.
This view shows work hours, total logged time, idle time, active time, an activity log, plus a running productivity score as well as screenshots of the employee's screen.
Larger companies, or those with more employees scattered remotely, might prefer using the Alert Log view, which shows a summary of alerts that correspond to rules created by managers or admins.
Some visualizations available include Flagged Data Count, Total Alerts By User, Risky Apps by User, and Alert Words by User.
Managers have the options to drill down and investigate these alerts, close them, keep them open, or change the flag’s color while attaching notes to the alert for future audits.
The Data View may not be as visually engaging, but it does cram a lot of data on the page.
Its purpose is log all the recorded data so it is easy to find while offering multiple ways to sort and filter.
Anyone familiar with the layout and behavior of spreadsheet applications will be right at home in this view, but casual users will be overwhelmed by the data that's presented.
Users that prefer their data turned into useful Information can opt for the Reports and Notifications View, which allows administrators to create reports with a step-by-step wizard.
These reports can be sent as emails or notifications on a daily, weekly, or on-demand cadence to selected recipients via email.
Search View is ideal for finding specific activity (i.e.
during an investigation) Using powerful keyword-powered search.
InterGuard’s search function sets it apart from competing solutions which do not always offer a quick way to find particular types of data.
Employee Data Monitoring
Once your admin UI begins populating with employee monitoring data, InterGuard is designed to not only oversee what's going on within your organization but engage in internal threat protection.
Using alerts, automated policies, and selection of powerful administrative tools, the product keeps a company's network secure by stopping employees from, knowingly or unknowingly sending or receiving files or visiting insecure websites or apps.
As with Teramind, the InterGuard admin can switch between stealth and investigative mode for a computer's agent, and thus be able to choose whether the monitoring software operates incognito on a user's machine or whether they're aware of the oversight.
The Welcome dashboard gives you a quick glance at how much of your allotted data viewing period, data storage, smart camera screenshots, licenses, notifications, and reports you've used and have left.
There are also tabs to open your activity log as well as to quickly configure various settings.
The main navigation menu on the left-hand side is broken down into six primary tabs: Dashboard, Active Devices, Support, Settings, DLP, and Endpoint Lockdown.
There are also links on top of the screen to open live chat, the InterGuard knowledge base, or submit a Help ticket.
The Dashboard tab at the top gives you the six different views we covered above.
Active Devices offers a list of PCs or smartphones with active agents, Support and Settings link to their respective sections, and Endpoint Lockdown provides various options to find the location of an endpoint, save the data, erase the data, or decommission the endpoint in the event of theft or loss.
Think of it as a LoJack for your remote clients.
There is a large array of data types you can capture with InterGuard.
The Recorded Data tab opens into an extensive list of folders and monitoring pages for all of the main employee monitoring vectors your organization wants to track.
First off, InterGuard tracks all email messages received and sent on the system, and syncs with Gmail, Outlook, and other email providers, either open in the browser or installed as an app.
InterGuard captures the text of the email as well as any attachment, and you can also configure Alert Words to trigger additional recording or notifications.
Alert Words are a powerful keyword tracking feature, also found in Teramind, in which you can configure a list of words and phrases to trigger automated actions, alerts, or reports.
So, if you wanted to know any time an employee used the last name of your company's CEO, then simply create an Alert Word.
To test this, I scrolled down into the Alert Words tab of the Settings menu where you can both add new categories as well as specific tracked words.
When adding a new Alert Word, I could also choose from "regular expressions" such as street or email addresses, phone numbers, and even credit card or social security numbers.
This level of privacy invasion found in InterGuard, Teramind, and Veriato Cerebral can be unsettling, particularly with targeted monitoring of employees' personal and financial data.
However, just because these features are there, doesn't mean your business needs to use them.
Screenshots can be taken over any specified interval, be it every 30 seconds or every few minutes, and the smart camera module doesn't just capture the screen as a whole.
InterGuard lets you monitor specific apps or websites and take targeted screen capture images within the screen itself.
Teramind and Veriato Cerebral have in-depth screenshots as well but neither gives admins quite as much control as InterGuard's Smart Camera feature.
Screenshots and keystroke data also accompanies all app and browser monitoring data to provide the full context of what a user was typing or doing.
InterGuard stores data chronologically in a timeline view once you drill down into a specific user, group, or computer.
Groups are also a built-in internal privacy tool, as an admin can designate a manager to oversee a specific group and only that group.
This way, they're not seeing any monitoring data beyond what they're supposed to see.
This is for added security and is also an option available in competitor, Workpuls.
Finally, InterGuard also performs full file tracking and monitors all printed documents.
In the Recording & Blocking settings tab, I was able to switch various monitoring vectors on and off, such as recording files and printed documents (this is also where you set screenshot intervals and turn Investigative Mode on and off).
InterGuard is fully configurable in terms of the file paths or drives an admin wants to monitor.
The File/User Tracking menu in the Recorded Data section breaks down data by documents, Dropbox files, downloads, logon events, print screenshots, USB, and webmail attachments.
So, if someone has a Dropbox client installed or inserts a USB device, then InterGuard will scan the files with an option to download and view.
This goes for email attachments as well though, unlike in Teramind, you can't perform a full optical character recognition (OCR) scan of the documents themselves to run keyword searches and additional monitoring.
You can...
