Employee Monitoring Software Added to BlackBerry Capabilities

SpectorSoft, a company that specializes in monitoring software, has created its first support system for BlackBerry phones. SpectorSoft’s 360 7.5 product is used for centralized monitoring of employer-issued computers and now company-issued Blackberry phones.  

The new system SpectorSoft designed for BlackBerry allows employers to capture e-mails and chat and can also notify IT supervisors if employees are violating company policies regarding BlackBerry use. Other features of the new software include the ability to analyze call records, which could be used as a way to monitor whether employees are communicating with competing businesses.

SpectorSoft VP of Marketing, Nick Cavalancia says the company chose BlackBerry over its biggest competitors because of Blackberry’s strong footprint in the finance and government sectors as well as its track record of having a more secure network than Google Android and Apple iOS.

Before the recent addition of BlackBerry, the software was installed in company-owned PCs and Apple Macs, both of which have stronger employee tracking abilities than the BlackBerry software due to limitations on bandwidth, costs and other factors.

The limited capabilities on Blackberry phones bring the installation cost down to $57 per phone, considerably cheaper than the $110 companies pay per computer. Spector’s consumer version of the software for BlackBerry has been in place since 2010. Its popularity is what prompted the company to create the new centralized system for businesses.

There is currently a consumer version available for Google Androids, and the company says it may develop a centralized monitoring system for Androids in the future. Apple iOS users, however, are out of luck for now: Spector notes that the software is incompatible with Apple’s mobile platform. The company also stated that the new software will not be available for the BlackBerry 10 phone slated for release at the end of January.