InterGuard Review

Why InterGuard Is Best for Remote Workers

Although InterGuard has been around since 2002, the company has kept improving its platform as the employee monitoring industry has evolved. InterGuard offers various solutions to record user activity both on and off the corporate network. It not only allows smooth cloud, SaaS and web-based interfacing, but it also is compatible with Mac, Windows and Chrome OS. There’s a mobile deployment offering for Android and iOS devices, meaning staff who work remotely are covered in all circumstances. Windows VDI and terminal servers are supported as part of the on-premises and enterprise solutions, though most users will opt for cloud hosting.

InterGuard also enhances a business’s ability to mitigate data loss. It highlights vulnerabilities such as risky keywords and user activity monitoring alerts, and its remote incident response service helps companies reacquire lost files and deleted or stolen assets. It can also lock a device if it is stolen, while endpoint lockdown capabilities allow you to locate employees’ devices. It’s possible to remotely retrieve or delete files and recover all monitored devices. This makes InterGuard a rival for the best remote PC access software.

InterGuard’s user interface features a series of drop-down menus for timesaving navigation. The dashboard includes pie charts and bar graphs to simplify reviewing data. The extensive settings tool allows you to govern overarching computer usage policies – restricting employees’ access to certain websites or setting “alert words” that tip you off when an employee might be breaching company policy. There are 30 preset reports, from which you and other administrators can create custom reports. It can generate and send out reports automatically.

InterGuard has many attributes that enhance an employer’s ability to track, assess, and manage employee performance and behaviors regardless of location. Its ability to help prevent nefarious activity and track work efficiency make it a complete employee monitoring solution for growing businesses of any size.

 Usability

If you’re the sort of person who has difficulty customizing an online birthday card, InterGuard may seem overwhelming at first. There are 67 charts, with six different views, and it’s possible to vary data recording settings by department if desired. Granular control over aspects like how frequently you want screenshots to be captured is advantageous, but it takes time to specify how you’d like data to be recorded and output.

To get the most out of InterGuard, you have to immerse yourself in it. Its potential is huge, but the immediate usability is less than you’d get from other platforms like SentryPC. Then again, that platform can’t monitor mobile devices, and it doesn’t offer the same wealth of features. We should also point out that other vendors have more comprehensive support tools than InterGuard, with Teramind particularly impressive in this respect. You can read our Teramind review and our review of SentryPC for more information.

InterGuard Features

InterGuard’s monitoring tools and features focus on several areas:

Employee Productivity

InterGuard’s software allows you to monitor computer activity in real time or after the fact via screenshots and video playback. Additionally, you can receive reports on how employees are spending their time. Specifically, the reports look at the applications they use and the websites they visit, showing how much time they spend on each. These features allow you greater insight into how your employees spend their time, which is helpful for monitoring remote team members who aren’t in the office regularly. We particularly welcome the fact that settings can be varied by department – keystroke monitoring for one team, website usage for another and so forth. This is a feature other platforms would do well to incorporate.

Insider Threat Protection

Specific options allow you to limit access to certain programs and websites, USB storage, and email attachments. You can set alerts to be triggered by keywords, attempted policy violations or other behaviors. Additionally, the software can access a remote device, such as an off-site employee’s computer. In this instance, you can use the software to retrieve a sensitive file, delete a stolen asset or lock down the device.

Investigations and Compliance Audits

The software can serve multiple purposes in terms of investigation and compliance. If an employee is visiting websites they shouldn’t be, the software can provide the necessary proof for disciplinary purposes. These records and logs can also help in the case of discrimination or wrongful termination lawsuits. Additionally, the software can provide detailed compliance reports for businesses that must follow certain regulations, such as HIPAA and PCI.

Web Filtering and Website Blocking

InterGuard shows detailed web and search activity and allows you to block access to specific websites. You can also create role-based web access policies to ensure that each employee can access the websites they need for their specific job. Suspicious behavior alerts allow you to acquire a remote view of an employee’s desktop. InterGuard’s ability to track and monitor in-office and out-of-office personnel makes it a dynamic provider in this category.

User Activity Monitoring

InterGuard can monitor many different aspects of your team’s digital activities, including email, social media, instant messaging, apps, file transfers, print jobs and keystrokes. The system can also take screenshots of employee devices in use so you can see exactly what they are looking at, with the images saved at intervals ranging from every five seconds to once per hour. It’s also possible to log activity as productive, unproductive or neutral; the third option is a nice touch for ambiguous activities or those that don’t neatly fit into either category. You can request reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

InterGuard Costs

We appreciate that InterGuard offers a one-week free trial to try out the software before buying it. Once the free trial expires, you can choose from two pricing plans: Business Cloud and Enterprise On-Premises.

• Business Cloud: This is InterGuard’s cloud-hosted service. Pricing for this plan starts at $9.99 per user per month for 11 to 25 users. If you have fewer than 11 or more than 25 employees, you’ll need to contact InterGuard directly for specific pricing.
• Enterprise On-Premises: The Enterprise On-Premises plan is hosted, managed and maintained on your company’s servers. This plan requires an SQL server and integrates with your organization’s Active Directory. You have access to 24/7 tech support with this plan. You’ll need to contact InterGuard’s sales team for a price quote.

InterGuard offers a lot for the money compared to other software platforms in the industry. Although the two options are essentially for different types of customers, their pricing is competitive with rival products, if a little difficult to uncover.

Setup

InterGuard captures a great deal of data on user activities, but you will have to view it through its cluttered and dated user interface. The platform is an effective tool once you learn how to use it; setting it up exactly the way you want can take a long time.

The sheer wealth of devices InterGuard works on can involve significant initial setup time. Again, though, that’s ultimately worthwhile for ongoing cross-platform maintenance. Once you learn that clicking the calendar next to the timeline displays a user’s idle time, doing so becomes second nature. The red/yellow/green flagging system is also quite intuitive, and it’s one of our favorite features.

Source: InterGuard

Customer Service

InterGuard offers plenty of options for customer support. You can reach the support team by phone, email and live chat. Tier 1 support is available 24/7, while Tier 2 support is available during normal business hours. The company does push customers toward communication via chatbot, but a contact number is published on every page of the InterGuard website. That said, InterGuard’s competitors have more online support resources.

Drawbacks

InterGuard’s main challenge is that the platform is not very intuitive. It’s perfectly navigable once you’ve learned the software, but finding the right tools can take a while at first. People with a short attention span or limited time might find this frustrating, though being able to filter by site, user, date, department and even USB device is very impressive.

The default period for storing content is just two weeks, though you can increase this to a year via Google Cloud. However, businesses that would rather not embed themselves in Google’s ecosystem will have limited access to historic content, which might pose a problem in specific scenarios (such if an issue arises while a manager is away for a few weeks). [Related article: Google for Small Business Launches New SMB Initiative]

It’s also slightly off-putting that prices for the cloud-hosted solutions are based on 11 to 25 users. InterGuard will provide customized quotes for larger and smaller businesses, but this shouldn’t really be something you have to request a personalized price quote for. The lack of a freemium model is a minor drawback; in our experience, most companies that install free monitoring software for one or two staffers end up upgrading anyway.

Methodology

This review was produced alongside reviews and comparisons of nine other employee monitoring software platforms. We watched online presentations by company experts, investigated the different options and considered what these applications lacked compared to key competitors. In InterGuard’s case, we participated in live training with staff experts before producing a detailed comparison of this platform and rival products.

We also considered things from the employees’ perspective. There is significant evidence that employee monitoring software benefits morale if good results are shared with employees, but there will be instances when surveillance can feel intrusive. [Learn more about the laws and ethics of employee monitoring.]

Overall Value

We recommend InterGuard for …

• Businesses whose employees are now permanently remote.
• Managers who need to apply distinct levels of monitoring to different teams or departments.
• Teams seeking granular control of data reporting and extensive analysis.
• Companies that would benefit from constant screenshots.

We don’t recommend InterGuard for …

• Business owners who want a simple interface that’s easy to master.
• Managers who need access to the monitored devices’ cameras and microphones.
• Businesses that would like extensive online support resources.