Veriato is a veteran of the employee monitoring industry, having supplied some of the best employee monitoring software since 1998. Besides ransomware detection software, it now offers two employee monitoring software solutions: cloud-based Veriato Vision and on-site Veriato Cerebral.
In our Veriato evaluation, we primarily focus on Veriato Cerebral, as Veriato Vision is simply a re-branded version of the cloud-based employee monitoring software from Web Watcher that’s also used by competitor InterGuard.
- Read our guide to the best employee monitoring software.
Plans and pricing
Veriato doesn’t publish pricing on its website. The company told TechRadar that pricing for Veriato Cerebral is tier-based, with the price decreasing as the volume of users goes up. For a 50-user deployment, the price is $95/user/year. This positions Veriato in the middle of the pack for affordability.
How it works
For a Veriato Cerebral installation, you need a Windows computer with a Microsoft SQL Server to run the server software. A quad-core Xeon processor and 8 GB of RAM is recommended, but it’s possible to use a virtual machine for the server if you prefer. Upon installation, you need to enter your product key to activate the software over the internet.
By default, the Recorder application runs in stealth mode, so users are unaware that it is running. You can turn off stealth mode in the software’s general options. To install Recorders, you can use the management console to deploy the Recorder application remotely to all relevant devices on your network. Alternatively, you can manually install Recorders by running a setup file on the devices. Deploying to an Android device requires a few extra steps to install the .apk application file.
Once set up, the Recorder applications relay a wealth of data back to the server, detailing everything that users are doing on your devices.
Features and services
Veriato Cerebral’s user monitoring is comprehensive yet configurable to your needs. You can read instant-messaging chats, record the opening of documents, track printing, view emails sent and received, and record all files transferred via peer-to-peer applications, FTP, or HTTP file transactions. You can log every keystroke made and all network communication over the internet/intranet and see all searches performed in search engines. Screenshots can be taken every 30 seconds.
This could quickly become too much data to sift through, so you can set up alerts to inform you of critical events. For example, you can be alerted when a user types a threatening word or opens an application that you’ve listed as a potentially harmful program.
When installed on Android devices, Cerebral can monitor the location of employees. Within the management console, you can set up Geofences that designate the locations of your offices, so you can automatically track employees when they are on location or send alert emails when they cross a boundary.
Besides the comprehensive monitoring, Cerebral performs behavioral analytics to identity anomalies. For example, a user’s behavior pattern will be flagged as an anomaly if they suddenly start transferring large numbers of files where they hadn’t in the past. Employees are automatically placed into groups based on their behavior, and you can compare each employee’s behavior to the baseline behavior of the group.
Support and customer care
Veriato has a technical support FAQ site for Veriato Cerebral, with around 40 short articles. More useful is the comprehensive online manual, 365-page administrator’s guide, and 281-page guide to the Veriato dashboard. While these resources often bear the old name of the product (Veriato Recon/360), we found that they still apply to Veriato Cerebral.
Support is provided by tickets and phone. The support team is available Monday to Friday, from 7 AM to 7 PM Eastern Time. Veriato told us that they aim to answer all tickets within 24 hours, and in our testing, we received prompt and courteous support.
The competition
Teramind is another comprehensive employee monitoring tool with user behavior analytics and automated alerts. Teramind starts at $6/endpoint/month for an on-premise installation or $12/user/month for the cloud-based solution. One reason to choose Teramind over Veriato Cerebral is its more modern interface. You can also record and playback videos of users’ screens.
If you don’t need one of these employee monitoring powerhouses, ActivTrak is a simpler option. It’s a cloud-based solution with a free plan for up to three users. It doesn’t log user keystrokes, which limits the data analysis you can perform, but this also makes it more palatable to employees wary of monitoring software.
Final verdict
Veriato Cerebral is one of the most comprehensive tools for employee monitoring available. Not only does the software enable you to record a tremendous amount of data on what your team members are doing during their workday, but it also has the tools for you to quickly make sense of the data and take action. The user interface feels clunky at first and isn’t as flashy as some competitors, but the administration console gives you all the information you need in a concise, straightforward way.
Managers will need to consider the relative complexity of setting up and running an on-site employee monitoring system. But there are benefits to be had here too: it’s more secure than a cloud-based solution, and you have unprecedented control over your employee monitoring setup. Veriato also supplies a simpler cloud-based solution in Veriato Vision, but if you want the most precise and comprehensive employee monitoring tools with automated alerts and behavioral analytics, few options beat Veriato Cerebral.
- Read our guide to the best employee monitoring software.
