Post-Email Channels Deserve Increased Scrutiny Text messages, social media and collaboration platforms are now squarely in regulators’ crosshairs, and organizations are increasingly being caught unaware. Smarsh’s Mike Pagani discusses why, as firms enable contemporary communications to enhance efficiency, it’s critical to capture and supervise all pertinent communications for proactive monitoring and supervision. The alternative leads to higher risks of reputational damage and progressively...

From Mandatory Requirement to Valuable Business Enabler Just because you have prohibited employees from communicating about business matters via any channel apart from email doesn’t mean your bases are covered. Mike Pagani explains how prohibition is not prevention, and why, for organizations in highly regulated fields, more concrete steps must be taken to mitigate risks and potential violations. When it comes to...

“Text Messaging Can Expose Your Company to Significant Risks”: In this article, Mike Pagani explains that texting is quick, easy, reliable and efficient — but if it’s used for official business communications, it can create tremendous risk for a company. Organizations of all sizes need to put the right policies in place, and implement automated text archiving and supervision systems as soon...

Along with Increases in Productivity and Reach Come Real Risks New collaboration platforms such as Slack and Facebook Workplace are rapidly gaining traction in businesses large and small, especially among younger workers and millennials who gravitate to these tools because they are much more immediate and efficient than trading emails or voice messages. However, such gains in workforce productivity can come with...

The New Reality of Compliance More than halfway through 2017, it’s become clear: This is the year that mobile and social technologies, paired with shifting demographics, are changing compliance practices forever. What’s the Big Deal with Mobile and Social? Mobile, social and the changing demographics of the investor community – namely millennials – are changing the way financial services firms and their...

Regulators don’t expect perfection in your compliance systems, but they will require a clear set of policies governing all communications channels, documented evidence of employee training, and safeguards for remediation of any violations. In this piece, Smarsh Chief Evangelist Mike Pagani provides a fresh perspective on supervising electronic communications.

Under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and FINRA record-retention requirements, firms must ensure the capture of business-related communications regardless of the devices of networks used. Smarch Chief Evangelist Mike Pagani explains why this mandate is a clear confirmation that the days of only having to maintain compliance systems for email are over.

At the heart of the compliance focus with social media channels is the balance between personal and business orientation for each of the various channels – namely LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. The potential co-mingling of personal and business content as a result of using the same social media channel and persona for both raises some interesting issues, however…

Employees are stepping up their interest in using their own personal social media apps, accounts and established networks of contacts to communicate for business purposes, given the immediate reach and traction they provide. Maintaining compliance has just gotten much more difficult, but the good news is that there are key technologies that can help.

We’ve come a long way, baby. Companies utilizing complete digital archiving solutions are able to reap benefits including highly efficient file searching, email tracking, social media oversight, and analysis of communications. Not only does comprehensive archiving smooth the e-discovery process, it also enables organizations to detect and prevent compliance violations and better manage various risks.