It’s a straightforward question.  With a complex answer.

Financial services firms have long used technology to supervise the communications and activities of employees, to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and be able to detect issues such as market abuse, mis-selling or data privacy. It’s a key control for meeting regulatory obligations including MiFID II,  CFTC, FINRA, IIROC and GDPR and a standard feature of working in a regulated industry. Likewise data loss prevention tools are commonplace across businesses to reduce the risks of data loss and exposure.  All designed to protect consumers, employees, and shareholders.  

The rapidly increasing use of chat in modern work-from-anywhere workplaces has exposed new compliance, privacy, and security risks. Not least the need to comply with regulatory obligations for retention, supervision, privacy and security mandated by regulators worldwide.

If the last 14 months have taught us anything, it is the importance of being able to pivot not only quickly, but securely. For many organizations, that requires leaning into unified communication and collaboration platforms in ways they never have before. The concept of “work from anywhere” has gained traction within the last year and organizations that have been able to embrace the concept and continue to build trusted relationships with their customers saw an increase in business because they were able to adapt. Implementing unified communication and collaboration tools was a strategic move, and as a result, organizations were able to deliver superior client experiences. In a recent webinar, “Using Theta Lake Compliance to Maximize your ROI with RingCentral,” Daniel Bridges, former CTO of Attivo Group, explains how Theta Lake and RingCentral transformed his organization and enabled him to offer a more seamless client experience.

Nineteen video meetings in one day is Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan’s personal record.   It’s a new way of working that many can relate to, and similarly struggle to get through.  The notion that extensive on-screen calls cause feelings of fatigue is supported by Microsoft’s own research.   But it’s not just the ‘constraints of video conferencing technology, when combined with increased cadence in meetings’ that’s causing fatigue, it’s the fact that video calls also require more engagement and concentration.  The absence of the non-verbal cues we’d normally rely on in person, the need for sustained attention through meetings and a lack of variety in what’s shown on screen are all contributors.

On March 3, 2021, the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (“OCIE”) announced its 2021 Exam Priorities—the first such missive in the pandemic era. The Commission’s ability to be flexible and nimble in its approach to 2020 exams and plans for this year are laudable. To bolster that effectiveness, the recently created Event and Emerging Risk Examination Team will improve and expand OCIE’s rapid response capabilities. (I wrote more about the EERT here). Based on this year’s priorities, OCIE and EERT will be very busy in 2021.

Compliance and security for modern collaboration platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, RingCentral, Red Box, and more is critically important particularly in light of the increase in usage of these platforms. To help you navigate the complexity and demonstrate a better way of conducting compliance and risk detection within these platforms, we've created a webinar series that deep dives into various areas. This post contains our upcoming webinars that you can attend live and others that are available on-demand. Each is between 10 - 25 minutes in length. 

"How do I do [fill in the gap]?"  OR  "Just HOW do you make security and compliance easier for [Zoom, Webex, MS Teams, RingCentral, RedBox...]? 

FinTech Global released its annual Buyer's Guide this morning, which spotlights financial institutions and supplier ecosystem members in the regulatory technology (RegTech) market. The guide is intended to be a tool for financial institutions to navigate the available solutions, technologies, and suppliers of the RegTech market.

Typically, when we think about data breaches or loss, we picture scenarios where vast troves of personal data are accessed through brute force attacks or phishing attempts, resulting in thousands or millions of records being impacted. However, the release of smaller amounts of data, even a single PDF document or PowerPoint slide, can have serious and damaging ramifications for an organization.