Theta Lake has published its fourth annual survey report on modern communications compliance and security, highlighting the complex challenges faced by those tasked with maintaining compliance, security and data privacy. The report is based on the views and experiences of more than 500 compliance and security professionals from the heavily-regulated financial services, healthcare and government sectors across the U.S., the U.K. and Canada. It provides a snapshot of how communication platforms are being used and the issues organizations are struggling with, enabling them to benchmark their own practices and expectations against the wider industry, identifying any gaps or areas of exposure they may have.

If you didn’t have a chance to attend Zoomtopia this year, there’s still time to watch the sessions as all are available on-demand. Theta Lake was a sponsor of the show and is a long-time partner of Zoom, offering its users the ability to leverage every aspect of the platform and have full coverage for security and compliance across those communication channels.

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.  

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.

With the mass pivot to work-from-anywhere (WFA) business models, collaboration platforms have saved the day. Their feature-rich communication capabilities made it possible for organizations across industries to transition to remote work, without skipping a beat on the communication front.

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.

On December 1, 2020, Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner (“OPC”) issued a report on a data security incident at the Quebec-based financial services firm Desjardins.  The Desjardins incident involved an insider at the firm who accessed, collected, and leaked the personal information of over 9.7 million customers and users from Canada and elsewhere during a two year period—a staggering amount of data over an extended period of time.