Retaining Social Media Content for FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06

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Is your firm still finding it difficult to retain or otherwise address social media communications as required by FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06?

FINRA promulgated Regulatory Notice 10-06 last year to protect investors from false or misleading claims and representations on social networking sites.  To that end, securities firms must develop protocols to supervise and retain social media content and ensure compliance by their representatives.

It is no secret that FINRA 10-06 continues to bedevil securities firms.  FINRA chairman and chief executive Richard Ketchum acknowledged as much at an industry event in Washington, D.C. last month.  Indeed, Ketchum promised further guidance later this year to address certain challenges that social media content continues to pose for brokerage houses.

Nevertheless, firms can act now to meet the FINRA 10-06 “Recordkeeping Responsibilities” requirement by deploying one of the “systems” referenced in the regulation.    

Symantec Enterprise Vault 10 is precisely the type of “system” that will enable firms to comply with FINRA 10-06.  Enterprise Vault 10 and its network of technology partners will capture social media content from company hosted or controlled “interactive electronic forums” involving investors.  Such forums include blogs, social networking sites and corporate websites.

With social media content safely ingested into a centrally managed and indexed repository, Enterprise Vault 10 allows you to quickly search and analyze the data.  Through Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator, your firm can perform a cost-effective supervisory review of social media content to help ensure compliance with corporate policy and regulatory bodies.  Moreover, you can implement legal holds and efficiently retrieve archived social media content in response to legal and regulatory requests.  All of which enables you to establish the reasonableness of your retention and eDiscovery processes and demonstrate compliance with FINRA 10-06.

So while certain aspects of FINRA 10-06 may continue to be troubling, Enterprise Vault 10 will enable your firm to effectively comply with the regulation’s data retention requirement right now.