Colasoft Knowledge Base How to How to Monitor Employees’ Website Browsing Activities

How to Monitor Employees’ Website Browsing Activities

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It’s reasonable for business organizations that they use something to monitor what the employees are doing during work hours because the employees are paid off to finish their work efficiently. In almost all common offices employees have access to the Internet, and they can browse any website anytime they want. Some companies have policies that employees shouldn’t visit non-work related websites in business hours.

You may think it’s hard but it’s easy and simple for a network administrator to monitor your employees’ on-line activities. You don’t need any keyloggers programs installed on each of all your host machines, and sometimes they are reported as virus. The most invisible method would be placing a network monitor tool to listen in all network traffic on your core switch, and you can see all users’ website visiting records, who is visiting which website, when, and even the content of the webpage.

The following steps guide you how to monitor your employees’ website browsing activities.

  1. Download Capsa Enterprise Demo
  2. Follow the guides in Capsa Placement to setup your capture point. Briefly, it’ll be great if your core switch supports port mirroring (SPAN). You just need to setup port mirroring on that switch and plug Capsa in the monitoring port. And you are good to go with the monitoring.
  3. Run Capsa, and if there is anyone visiting a webpage, you can read HTTP protocol in the Protocol tab (figure below).
    The HTTP protocol means there are website visiting browsing activities
    The HTTP protocol means there are website visiting browsing activities
  4. To figure out the IP addresses of the HTTP users, click Locate on the toolbar of the Protocol tab.
  5. Next in the IP Endpoint tab, you can see the IP addresses of the hosts browsing websites (figure below).
    The IP Endpoint tab shows all the website visitors' IP addresses
    The IP Endpoint tab shows all the website visitors' IP addresses
  6. What websites are they visiting? Now go to the Log tab, you’ll see all webpage URLs in the HTTP Log. These log records show the IP addresses of the visitors, the website URL they visited, the time, etc (figure below).
    All the website browsing history logs
    All the website browsing history logs

More resources about employees’ online activities monitoring:

Last Updated on Tuesday, 19 April 2011 04:08  

Comments  

 
+2 #15 Colasoft Support 2014-09-22 07:16
Quoting Alexandre GILBERT:
That's wonderful. Anyway, in many companies, we're using proxies to access internet. I'd like to get the same HTTP Log but for frames accessing the proxy. I've added a custom proxy protocol using port 3128. Then, I know that traffic is HTTP but I can't use http log, as I know.
How I could get an http log using that custom protocol ?
Thanks.
Alexandre.

You cannot get an HTTP log using custom protocol.
HTTP log is only for HTTP protocol.
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+2 #14 Alexandre GILBERT 2014-09-18 13:06
That's wonderful. Anyway, in many companies, we're using proxies to access internet. I'd like to get the same HTTP Log but for frames accessing the proxy. I've added a custom proxy protocol using port 3128. Then, I know that traffic is HTTP but I can't use http log, as I know.
How I could get an http log using that custom protocol ?
Thanks.
Alexandre.
Quote
 
 
+2 #13 Colasoft Support 2014-09-18 07:28
Quoting Alexandre GILBERT:
Very useful. Anyway, in corporate, we're using proxy servers. So, I've added a Procol "Proxy" using port 3128. Then, I'd like to use the HTTP Log to view website involed like in the HTTP protocol. What do I have to do ?
And globally, is it the proper way to follow http traffic over a proxy ?

thanks for your help.

Alexandre ;o)

The HTTP Log only provides HTTP logs, visits via proxy server cannot be identified as HTTP log.
The best way to monitor HTTP traffic over proxy is to install Capsa on the proxy server.
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+2 #12 Alexandre GILBERT 2014-09-17 13:34
Very useful. Anyway, in corporate, we're using proxy servers. So, I've added a Procol "Proxy" using port 3128. Then, I'd like to use the HTTP Log to view website involed like in the HTTP protocol. What do I have to do ?
And globally, is it the proper way to follow http traffic over a proxy ?

thanks for your help.

Alexandre ;o)
Quote
 
 
+2 #11 Colasoft Support 2014-02-28 03:08
Quoting Sam:
hi,
why in my Log Tab doesn't have that much kind of Log Type (http, email, msn, etc)? it only show Global Log. i need http log to make the analyse more easier, what is missing from my capsa? thanks

If you want to view http logs, please first make sure you are using the Analysis Profile: Full Analysis or HTTP Analysis
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+1 #10 Sam 2014-02-26 16:33
hi,
why in my Log Tab doesn't have that much kind of Log Type (http, email, msn, etc)? it only show Global Log. i need http log to make the analyse more easier, what is missing from my capsa? thanks
Quote
 
 
+1 #9 Colasoft 2014-01-13 02:50
Quoting Kenneth East:
Hello. You say download Capsa Enterprise, does the instruction also works for Capsa Professional? /Kenneth

Yes, you can also download Capsa Professional Demo.
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+1 #8 Kenneth East 2014-01-11 11:50
Hello. You say download Capsa Enterprise, does the instruction also works for Capsa Professional? /Kenneth
Quote
 
 
+1 #7 Colasoft 2013-05-13 02:39
Quoting Jens:
Where is Facebook, wechat, line etc.....

Hi Jens,
Colasoft Capsa can record DNS, HTTP, Email, FTP, ICQ, MSN, and YAHOO logs, but cannot record facebook, wechat, or LINE logs.
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+2 #6 Jens 2013-05-10 15:13
Where is Facebook, wechat, line etc.....
Quote
 

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