While every business comes with certain challenges, those in the financial industry face some of the toughest challenges around. There are extensive regulations governing the industry and most of them affect the way that IT managers manage email archiving. Depending on the specific industry and the size of the business, these regulations can include SEC, FINRA, Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, Patriot Act, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and other important banking legislation.
When it comes to email archiving, there’s a common streak to a lot of these regulations. Simply put, email communications are considered important corporate records which must be retained and produced when requested by a regulator. In addition, they need to be protected and securely stored in case of a disaster recovery process, or in case they’re required for legal discovery.
Every industry has its own retention period, i.e. the length of time that records should be kept before they are deleted or destroyed. In the financial industry, emails need to be archived for 3-7 years. Apart from email archiving, there are also other regulatory requirements such as IM archiving.
In the financial industry, emails need to be archived for 3-7 years. IM archiving is also required. Click To TweetHere’s a short overview of the challenges that apply in the finance industry (some of these are across the board, while others are industry-specific):
Records management: this involves management of all communications, such as email and instant messages. It means retention in accordance with defined retention policies and the appropriate destruction i.e. deletion of communications in compliance with the specific regulations in the industry.
Data leak protection: financial firms deal with a plethora of sensitive information and are obliged to protect it.
eDiscovery: firms are obliged to produce communications as evidence in legal inquiries.
Spiraling costs: financial firms are working with decreasing budgets and spiraling IT costs. Email servers and email storage demands are increasing at a rapid rate.
HR issues: Work environment needs to be free of harassment. These days, a vast majority of harassment cases start over email.
To find out more about email archiving in the financial industry, download our free whitepaper “Email Archiving for the Financial Sector” by clicking on the image below.
