The Importance of Instant Messaging Compliance and Archiving

 

Discussing the growing need for compliance policies and archiving solutions for Instant Messaging apps used by employees


Phishing attacks are becoming more frequent and destructive by the day, and they are still the most common cause of data breaches in all industries. For threat actors to get access to your business and launch more assaults, all it takes is one member of staff to be misled by a phishing email or merely a link. Email is definitely the most prevalent vector used by attackers for phishing, with an average cost of $3.86 million per breach, yet SMS, social media networks, and instant messaging (IM) platforms are also standard.


Since IM differs from emails due to its real-time chat capabilities, many users believe that their data is not being saved or stored by other parties involved with the IM app, encouraging them to divulge sensitive information. That explains why 71% of employees worldwide admit to sharing sensitive and business-critical data via instant messaging and other corporate collaboration platforms, putting the organization's compliance and disaster management policies in danger.


The frequent use of instant messaging in corporate settings to communicate with other online users without archiving periodic messages using the IM archiving tool raises several legal and practical concerns. Furthermore, the simplicity with which anyone can download freely available instant messaging applications from the internet, the pandemic, and management's encouragement to do so for better collaboration but missing the technology, policies, or resources to monitor usage and communications can be catastrophic.


IM Messages Archiving Guidelines

Regardless of the unawareness of the grave situation and the lack of policies, some regulatory restrictions for email and communications archiving, including instant messaging, apply to some enterprises.

  • SEC 17a-4 requires businesses to comply with specific rules while storing information to assure an inedible record. All documents, including instant messaging conversations, must be saved in a write once, read many (WORM) formats, a data copy must be maintained in a secondary place, and records must be kept for at least six years.

  • FINRA rules are similar to SEC but include a supervisory mechanism to be developed to examine their activities, including transactions, customer complaints, and internal communications. The supervision criteria and standards for retail, institutional, and public communications are detailed in FINRA Rules 2210, 2212, and 2216.

  • According to SOX compliance, relevant records that form the basis of an audit or review or financial data relating to it must be retained for seven years.

  • To comply with the GDPR regulations, organizations must develop governance since sensitive information is dispersed around the organization, concealed in files, emails, and many other data sources, including IM chats, and necessitates complete monitoring.

  • HIPAA covered organizations must keep exact copies of documents and policies containing e-PHI for at least six years after they were created or the last day they were in effect. In terms of archiving requirements, data copies must be preserved in an immutable format with integrity. e-PHI must also be made available to patients upon request, and only authorized staff should have access to information. Documents must have updated security settings for PHI protection, and all activities done on documents must be recorded in an audit log.


Importance of Creating Policies and Educating Employees

Due to differing expectations about the durability of remarks made over IM, sales personnel may disseminate instant messages that make claims that would not be made via email or printed material. For instance, users may make remarks through IM messaging that could ultimately be regarded as warranties or public statements subject to securities law. Furthermore, instant messages captured by a chat participant may be used as proof that a binding agreement was reached among chat participants in particular circumstances, even if one or more participants believed they were simply having off-the-record conversations. Moreover, employees within a corporation may engage in inappropriate workplace chat that violates corporate rules or is otherwise harmful to the company. All these issues are more likely to occur when instant messaging participants are unaware that their communications may be monitored, recorded, and preserved. Thus, a dire need for instant messaging compliance policies and practices.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Financial Services Sector Can Reduce Costs and Time in Operations

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, bank profit margins have remained considerably low in the United States and other advanced economies. One of the biggest reasons is that the expenses have been outpacing revenues and, especially in Europe, the average return on equity of banks has dropped to undesirable lows. Furthermore, regulatory compliance and high levels of expenditure due to the suddenly remote workforce and increased risks due to defaults, insurance claims, client insolvency, and other factors added to the pressure. Therefore, the financial sector must act fast to increase profits, or be forced to continue laying off staff, which reached half a million last year, since 2014.  The profits can be increased in many ways, such as streamlining offerings, digitizing processes, seeking low-cost organic growth, and scaling up through mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships. But apart from increasing the profits, cutting costs can also help the financial services industry b...
Read more

The Role of a Compliance Strategy in Mitigating Cyber-Attacks

  Discussing why, now more than ever, privacy compliance procedures are required to combat cyber-attacks Cyber-attacks are not uncommon in today's day and age. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, cyber-attacks have skyrocketed, with some reports suggesting a 600% rise . At the same time, some anticipate that IoT cyber-attacks will double by 2025. And, with a 0.05 % rate of detection (or prosecution) of such attacks in the United States, it is difficult to conceive the devastation produced by even a modest increase in attacks. So, what do we do? Create a systematic compliance effort for your company. A structure that ensures, at the very least, the following: Having a Comprehensive Compliance Strategy Many businesses do not have a centralized plan in place to ensure data privacy compliance that is simple yet comprehensive, integrated, quantified, and centralized. This may be achieved by developing a high-level set of principles and documents that outline the measures t...
Read more

Traversing Through eDiscovery Data Sources Amid the Hybrid Work Environment

  A look at eDiscovery data sources, the issues they provide in today's hybrid work environment, and possible solutions The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a tsunami of new technologies, software, procedures, methodologies, and upgrades to old ones, allowing the world's suddenly remote workforce to interact and collaborate more effectively . Meanwhile, cloud service providers saw an unprecedented increase in product utilization since businesses now require it more than ever. However, after almost two years, as we transition from completely remote work culture to a hybrid or back-to-office work culture, companies are yet again struggling. This time, the concern is the ever-increasingly complex regulatory compliance environment. And it only requires more severe and strong systems and procedures to cater to the massive surplus of eDiscovery data sources generated recently. Amid this chaos are the legal professionals, specifically the eDiscovery and compliance teams. They are entrust...
Read more