New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has reportedly deployed a Digital User Experience Monitoring tool on laptops issued to employees, raising questions over data security and the extent to which employee activity may be monitored. According to sources, the tool can provide visibility into applications accessed on company-issued laptops and the amount of time spent on them. However, it remains unclear whether the data is being collected primarily for IT and security purposes or whether it can also be used to monitor individual employee activity.
The development is being viewed internally from two perspectives. While one view is that the technology is intended to strengthen the security of sensitive client data and improve the performance of IT infrastructure, another is that it could provide greater visibility and control over employee activity. Questions have particularly emerged over whether application usage and working-hour data can be accessed at an individual employee level.
TCS has not formally disclosed the name of the software or monitoring tool reportedly being used, its vendor, or the specific categories of employee data that may be collected. The company has also not clarified who within the organisation can access the information or whether the data is linked to individual employees or aggregated for use by IT and security teams.
Industry experts point out that Digital Experience Monitoring technology is not necessarily designed only for employee surveillance. Such tools can be used to assess user experience, identify application performance issues, detect software failures and understand how much time is being spent on different applications. For enterprises managing large IT infrastructures, these metrics can help identify technical problems and improve operational efficiency.
However, the scope and manner of deployment remain important. If application usage, login patterns or working-hour information is available at the individual employee level and is subsequently used for performance assessment or continuous monitoring, it could raise concerns around workplace privacy and employee surveillance.
The development comes at a time when Indian IT services companies are facing increasing pressure to protect sensitive client information. With large workforces using company-managed devices, endpoint security, data-loss prevention and digital activity monitoring have become important components of enterprise cybersecurity strategies.
At the same time, collecting and analysing activity data across a workforce of nearly 600,000 employees could create significant operational and data-management challenges. It is also not clear whether the reported monitoring arrangement has been deployed across the entire workforce or is restricted to selected employees, teams or client projects.
Employee-monitoring technology is not new to the IT and Business Process Management industry. Last year, Cognizant came under scrutiny over the use of ProHance, a workforce-management tool capable of tracking activity on company laptops, including login time, application and website usage, as well as periods of inactivity. Cognizant had maintained that such tools were not being used to track or evaluate individual employee performance and that they were deployed on selected client projects to understand process steps and identify inefficiencies.
The development also follows TCS’s expanded partnership with cybersecurity company Zscaler and the launch of TCS Workspace Experience Studio. TCS has described the offering as combining zero-trust security, workplace observability, digital experience monitoring and AI-powered experience analytics to help enterprises monitor and improve their digital workplaces.
However, it could not be independently established whether the monitoring technology reportedly deployed on employee laptops is connected to the Zscaler-powered technology. TCS’s public description of Workspace Experience Studio relates to enterprise customers, while the current development concerns monitoring on employee devices.
For now, the key question is the actual scope of the monitoring system and how information relating to employees is being collected, processed and accessed. Until TCS provides clarity on the tool’s capabilities, data-collection practices and access controls, it would be premature to categorise the system solely as either a productivity-monitoring measure or an employee-surveillance mechanism.
About the author — Suvedita Nath is a science student with a growing interest in cybercrime and digital safety. She writes on online activity, cyber threats, and technology-driven risks. Her work focuses on clarity, accuracy, and public awareness.
