Spector360.com >>> Awards/Press Mentions
 Network Products Guide has named Spector 360 a recipient of its 2010 Product Innovation Awards. The Silicon Valley Communications publication is dedicated to recognizing ground-breaking companies bringing essential and incremental changes to networking and computing. “Products such as Spector 360 are helping businesses address productivity, ethics, security, and compliance concerns head on,” said Rake Narang, Network Products Guide Editor-in-Chief.
 Spector 360, SpectorSoft's flagship corporate product, received a 2009 Award of Excellence from Tech & Learning. As one of this year's outstanding technology products in education, Spector 360 was put through rigorous testing and several rounds of judging by Tech & Learning editors and more than 30 qualified educators.
"Receiving the Tech & Learning award is a testament to SpectorSoft's proven ability to help schools throughout the world gain significant insight and control over student activities, and to comply with best practices and legal requirements like the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA)," said SpectorSoft President C. Douglas Fowler.
 IT World Canada highlights Spector 360 as an alternative solution to blocking or filtering employee access to Facebook and discusses how companies can dig deeper to determine the impact social networking has on employee productivity. With the explosive growth and popularity of social networking web sites it has become more important than ever that companies learn to set boundaries and monitor use of these services. A recent study by Nucleus Research concluded that 77% of workers surveyed reported using Facebook during work hours with some users approaching two hours a day on the site. Spector 360 monitoring software is designed to eliminate employee abuse of social networking web sites by providing employers with the means to evaluate how frequently they are visited, how much time is spent on these sites during business hours and whether they are used for business or leisure.
Spector 360 is named a "Product to Watch" by the editors of eWeek in a feature dedicated to enterprise-class tools that should be on every IT professionals' radar — products and services that promise to create efficiencies as well as competitive advantage.
 Spector 360 was featured in a BusinessWeek article titled “Tech that Combats Employee Fraud”. The writer, Rachael King, highlighted two SpectorSoft customers who use the monitoring software company’s products to combat employee fraud and Internet abuse. According to the article, “Instances of fraud rise during recessions as employees become financially desperate or disgruntled during tough economic times.” One recent survey found that two-thirds of executives expected accounting fraud to increase during the next two years. King noted, “To help avoid cases of worker fraud, companies are increasingly using monitoring and tracking software.” SpectorSoft customer Thomas Vanderbilt Communications uses the company’s products to monitor financial fraud and adherence to confidentiality agreements it signs with clients. According to the article, “The software, made by SpectorSoft, proved especially valuable when it sniffed out dummy expense reports being created by a new accounts payable clerk.”
The article also pointed out that during uncertain times employees tend to spend longer “production-sapping” time surfing the Internet for personal reasons. According to King, “Software that monitors keystrokes can potentially find those red flags.” According to one research report, roughly 45 percent of companies monitored computers in 2007 which was up nearly ten percent from 2005. The article noted that SpectorSoft helped one customer, IMV Projects, recoup at least 10 hours of work per year from each of its 650 customers. IMV estimates that the “increased productivity amounts to at least $195,000 per year.”
 SpectorSoft’s Spector 360 employee monitoring software received the XCellence Award for “Best Software Solution” at the Everything Channel XChange Tech Innovators event Nov. 17-19 in San Jose, CA. The XCellence Awards measure overall Business and Technology Integrator perceptions of Vendor products. XChange XCellence Award winners are selected by top Solution Providers and honor the companies with the most exceptional products and technologies. “Spector 360 has been the subject of considerable excitement at all of the Everything Channel events we’ve attended, so this honor is not only a great positive affirmation, but also a natural progression for this standout product,” said Sharon Woolley, Director of Channel Sales at SpectorSoft. “Spector 360 truly impresses everyone who spends the time to learn more about it.” Spector 360 has been nominated for this distinction on two previous occasions.
According to eWeek’s Frank Ohlhorst, “Once installed and configured, Spector 360 proves to be a very powerful tool, thanks in part to the product’s comprehensive reports. Administrators can generate reports for each machine monitored or roll those reports up into a department level report. Charts, graphs and detailed information are readily available in many of the reports, making it easy to identify trends or identify areas that may need additional focus.” Ohlhorst noted, “The latest version of Spector 360 adds some new features that most employers will find appealing. For example, the product’s data handling capacity has been increased to meet the needs of large, multi-site organizations, such as school districts or government agencies.”
Ohlhorst started the review with valuable commentary about the issues associated with employee monitoring and productivity, “When it comes to Internet usage policy, most companies have three choices before them – to block access using filtering, to monitor access for policy violations or to turn a blind eye and hope for the best.” Ohlhorst went into detail on the issues involved in employee monitoring noting, “Further complicating the block/monitor/ignore dilemma is the fact that employee productivity can be greatly impacted by which path is chosen. What’s more, unfettered access to the Internet, e-mail, IM and other technologies could be a legal nightmare in the making, either from an HR point of view or intellectual property point of view. Solution providers may want to consider using another term to characterize monitoring – compliance."
Read the entire article online at:
http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/Reviews/SpectorSoft-Spector-360-62-Offers-New-Features-to-Monitor-Employee-Internet-Use/?kc=rss
An IT manager at a mid-sized law firm says his 50 licenses of SpectorSoft’s Spector 360 has returned to the firm’s HR manager 30–40 per cent of her working hours.
This is a big improvement over the old monitoring software. Before, if one of the firm’s managers asked the HR manager to watch one employee, it would take her “literally days” to provide an answer about the nature of that person’s activity “by going through each screenshot and watching it like a movie and seeing what the person was doing,” says the IT manager. “It was just tedious and time-consuming,”
Using the Spector 360 product, she simply sends back an e-mail report produced by the software that details all computer usage of a problem employee. (The IT manager still recommends the executive go through the report carefully to gauge the seriousness of the offences). Managers in that group or department can then, for example, see a keystroke count or what sites were visited over a given time period. Then they can decide if they want to approach the person and take disciplinary action.
Read the entire article online at:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;68104732;fp;4194304;fpid;1
 Spector 360 has been awarded PC Magazine Editors' Choice in a September 2008 review. In awarding the product four and a half stars, author Matthew Sarrel, called Spector 360 "better than anything else I have tested" and "mature."
The in-depth analysis began by discussing why employers should use products like Spector 360 to detect if employees are misusing computing resources noting, "If installed before your problems begin, monitoring software may prevent malfeasance, because employees know they are being watched."
Mr. Sarrel commented that installing Spector 360 was a breeze, "the server components took less than half an hour" and the Client Deployment Utility is a "straightforward, well-documented wizard."
The article discussed Spector 360's many monitoring features and in-depth reports stating, "the software really began to show its excellence at internal espionage." While discussing Data Loss Prevention, a growing issue that employers face, Sarrel noted, "Talk about an audit trail! The system is powerful enough to uncover data loss by tracking users sending sensitive files as attachments or copying them to removable storage devices such as USB keys, iPods, or CDs." He also liked Spector 360's unique Keyword Alerts saying, "This feature works well, and alerts were typically e-mailed in a few minutes."
The reviewer highlighted 360's built in reporting functionality saying, "The product's comprehensive reporting features really make it stand apart from the crowd….Spector 360 gives you a full-fledged application with plenty of text reports, charts, and graphs. If you've chosen to capture everything, as I recommend, you can slice and dice by application, user, Web sites visited—almost by anything you can imagine."
Mr. Sarrel concludes by saying, "I'd be hard-pressed to find any major deficiencies in Spector 360. I've been following this space for years, and I think this is the most mature product in the class. And it's likely to get better."
Read the entire review online at:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2320460,00.asp
Spector 360 has been named "Best Surveillance Software" by Network Products Guide, a leading publication dedicated to technology solutions.
In their annual Best Products and Services review, Spector 360 was singled out for "bringing employee monitoring to the forefront of the industry because of its ability to track, via easy-to-read charts and graphs, everything a user does at the PC and on the Internet.”
Read the entire review online at:
http://www.networkproductsguide.com/best/2008/SpectorSoft.html
 SpectorSoft Corporation's Partner Program was certified as a Gold 5-Star Overall Winner in the VARBusiness 2008 Partner Program Guide.
The CMP Channel publication acknowledged the commitment and strength of SpectorSoft's partner program for its Channel resellers, IT integrators, and technology consultants. SpectorSoft was also certified as a Silver 5-Star Winner in the Marketing, Support, Channel Operations, and Partner Recruitment elements of the awards program. Inclusion in the "Gold 5-Star" category places SpectorSoft in good company. Some of last year's winners included CA, Cisco, Citrix, HP, Fujitsu, and IBM.
SpectorSoft's Spector 360 PC and Internet activity monitoring software was one of three finalists for "Best Software Solution" at the CMP XChange Tech Innovators show October 7-9 in Miami, FL.Nominees included FalconStor, and VMWare.
At the same event, SpectorSoft's live Spector 360 demo was nominated as a finalist for "Best XChange Appointment Demonstration."Other nominees included FalconStor, and HP.
The show's field of nearly 50 vendors included such industry powerhouses as AMD, Citrix, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, Lexmark, McAfee, Toshiba, and Xerox.
 Calling SpectorSoft one of the "Standouts" at CMP XChange '07 conference in Orlando, Computer Reseller News placed the company's Spector 360 on their list of "14 Hot Products". According to the editors, "The latest release of its PC monitoring and employee surveillance software adds several features, including the ability to block or allow entire categories of Web sites via centralized policy management and the ability to block specific Internet chat or instant messaging contacts."
 Spector 360 has been awarded 5 Stars by PC Pro magazine and receives the official "PC Pro Recommended" seal.
The review calls Spector 360 "invaluable in detecting computer misuse and security issues". During their evaluation, reviewers found Spector 360 to be "easy to install" and noted that "good security practice means monitoring and reporting is essential".
 Wall Street Journal writer Katherine Wegert, featured SpectorSoft in a recent article about how important it is for businesses to keep up with what is new and pick technology that can monitor, filter and block access to inappropriate Web sites, e-mails and instant messaging systems. The WSJ article covered one of SpectorSoft customers', Ajax Boiler Inc., experiences.
Ajax found one of their 100 employees bringing a rival's proprietary information into their system and another reading the HR manager's e-mail.
According to the article, "Both staff members would have escaped notice if it weren't for a recent upgrade to Ajax's security software. The product, made by Vero Beach, Fla. based SpectorSoft Corp., essentially records everything employees do on their computers including Web sites they have visited, time spent looking at a site, e-mails they have sent, and more."
The piece, which also appeared in the Associated Press, WSJ.com, BusinessWeek.com, Forbes, and YahooFinance.com continued, "The greatest risk to company security now comes from within, security analysts say. In the past, the threat has been mostly from spammers and hackers. Employers are increasingly relying on advanced software to protect their systems against the new threats."
"Monitoring is becoming more prevalent now than it has been," said Gartner analyst Peter Firstbrook, adding that both the insider threat and compliance issues are driving the growth. "People sending things to themselves or stealing intellectual property is a real concern."
That's why analysts say that it is important for businesses to keep up with what's new and pick technology that can monitor, filter, block access to inappropriate Web sites and purge e-mails and instant messaging systems.
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