Digitalization continues to emerge in many industries.
With the increasing use of technology, companies accelerate their operations to become efficient and innovative. One example is the use of mobile archiving to adhere to communication compliance.
The Rising Importance of Mobile Communication
Mobile communication is essential in the corporate world. It improves work productivity and allows employees to collaborate with their co-workers.
In 2021, 64% of U.S. employees used their smartphones for work-related purposes. With the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have continued leveraging online channels to communicate with their team. It becomes more beneficial in a remote work set-up.
What is Mobile Archiving?
Despite the advantages of online communication, businesses should be able to monitor and track business communication. This is why mobile archiving plays a vital role in communication compliance.
Mobile archiving includes text and call archiving. Regulatory bodies consider work-related content from company-issued phones as a reliable business record.
They encourage organizations to secure and retain all electronic communications, including SMS, voicemail, and calls. These records will help the government to prove a situation once legal concerns occur in the company.
SEC and FINRA Record-Keeping Rules
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) aims to monitor and protect the investors of the securities market. It ensures firms have secured archiving systems for work-related communications.
Along with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), they mandated the SEC Rule 17a-4 to monitor broker-dealer firms in their record-keeping activities.
The SEC Rule 17a-4 requires companies to capture and archive electronic communications. To prevent data modification, it must comply with the Write Once Read Many (WORM).
Additionally, FINRA provides directives on social media usage for business communications. It emphasizes supervising and capturing social media chats, posts, voice calls, and emails. Separating personal and work-related communications is vital to avoid confusion and further concerns.
With the rising popularity of messaging applications like Signal, WeChat, and Telegram, companies should abide to communication compliance. Performing mobile archiving based on the FINRA retention requirements is imperative to prevent liabilities.
To learn more about mobile archiving and compliance, here is an infographic from TeleMessage.
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