When a business buys a productivity tool, the conversation is usually about reports and price. Security comes up late, if at all. That's backwards. A productivity tool installs software on every company computer and collects detailed information about how each employee spends the day. That makes it a security decision first.
We're CyberWall Security. We provide managed IT and security for businesses, including CyberWall Shield for threat detection and response, Microsoft 365 account monitoring and backup. We built CyberWall Insights because our clients asked us to. This post explains why we think the two belong together.
How Insights started
Our clients kept asking us the same question: how is my team actually spending the workday? Many had moved to remote or hybrid work and lost the informal view they used to have. Some were already paying for a separate productivity tool from a vendor that had nothing to do with their security.
That second point worried us. Here was software running on every machine we were responsible for protecting, collecting sensitive data, managed by a company our clients had never vetted the way they vetted us. So we built the reports our clients asked for, one at a time. We tested every feature on our own staff first. And we put it in the same console as their security.
Reason 1: One less agent, one less vendor
Every piece of software on a computer is something that can fail, conflict or be attacked. Every vendor with access to your data is another relationship to vet, another contract and another place a breach could happen. When your security provider also runs your productivity reporting, you cut both lists by one.
It also means the team that watches for threats knows exactly what the productivity agent does, how it's deployed and what it sends. Nothing is a mystery.
Reason 2: Security-first design from the start
A security team builds differently. Security is our number one priority, and it shows up in specific choices:
- Collect less. Insights records active and idle time, apps, window titles and website names. It never records keystrokes, email, document or chat content, or full URLs. Data that is never collected can't leak.
- Multi-factor authentication on every login.
- Each company's data is isolated, and managers see only their own company.
- Screenshots are off by default for every company. They are a paid add-on that we enable only at a customer's request. They're never taken while the screen is locked, and they're deleted automatically after 7, 14 or 30 days.
- Deployment through Microsoft Intune, which most of our clients already use to manage their computers.
- We never sell data.
These aren't add-ons to a productivity product. They're the starting point.
Reason 3: Productivity signals and security signals overlap
Some of the most useful alerts sit right between productivity and security. A large USB file copy. Heavy use of file-sharing sites. Activity at 2 a.m. on an account that never works nights. A productivity tool might show these as odd usage. A security team knows what they can mean and what to check next.
For businesses that also use CyberWall Shield, the picture gets more complete. Microsoft 365 sign-in alerts, threat detections, backup status and Insights alarms appear in the same console, under one login. When a productivity alert and a security alert involve the same person on the same day, you see both.
Reason 4: A local team you can call
When a report looks wrong or an alert needs interpretation, you want to talk to someone who knows your environment. Because we already support many of our clients' IT, we know their systems, their users and their history. That context matters when you're deciding whether an alert is a problem or a coincidence.
Insights is our product, built and run by our own team.
Reason 5: Honest pricing and clear terms
Insights costs $4 per active user per month, and you're billed only for employees who were actually active in the last 30 days. The screenshots add-on is $2 per user per month if you want it. There's a 14-day free trial with full access, no cancellation fee and you can cancel any time. Shield clients can add Insights to their existing service.
Questions to ask any productivity vendor
Whether or not you choose us, these questions are worth asking anyone who wants to install monitoring software on your computers:
- Exactly what data does the agent collect, and what does it never collect?
- Does it log keystrokes? Capture full URLs? Read message content?
- Are screenshots on by default? Are they taken while the screen is locked? How long are they kept?
- Is multi-factor authentication required for every login?
- How is our data separated from other customers' data?
- How is the agent deployed and updated?
- Who can I call when something looks wrong, and do they know our environment?
- Does the vendor sell or share our data?
If the answers are vague, that tells you something.
The bottom line
Productivity data is sensitive data. It belongs with people whose daily work is protecting systems and information, who collect only what's needed, and who you can reach when you have a question. That's why we built Insights inside the same console as our security services, and why we keep building it by listening to the businesses that use it.