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Brokerage Instant Messages Must Be Saved

Posted by simoniker on from the casual-bathroom-conversations-also dept.

DrEnter writes "According to an AP story on Yahoo!, the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) has told its members that they must keep a copy of all instant messages sent or received by employees for at least three years. This is similar to their requirements on keeping e-mail, although technically not nearly as easy. The NASD is a self-regulatory organization, and U.S. federal law requires almost all of the 5,300 U.S.-based securities firms and brokerages to be a member of it. There's a news release from the NASD concerning the requirement - it looks like the daunting technical issues have already resulted in some firms banning the use of IM completely."

4 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. That should be easy by Daath · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just build a custom Jabber server that saves everything serverside!

    Call it Corporate Jabber or something... Users should, however, be warned of the logging!

    Recently, here in Denmark, an employee of a company was dragged in court, because she was sending private mails from work (through an online dating site). The court ruled that it was ok, and that the company should stay out of the employees private life - even if she had some [private life] at work. Go Denmark ;)

    Anyway, there are lots of things to think about when logging...

    --
    Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
  2. Re:daunting technical issues? by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What daunting technical issues? Nearly every instant messaging client has the ability to always log conversations.

    Would you trust your IM to log messages? What if the logging fails? Will your boss listen to you, or would you rather not take the risk at all?

    --
    .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
  3. Re:daunting technical issues? by Surak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's what IT staff are for. That's why you use standardized builds of client PCs. The IT staff does the integration work to ensure that things like logging occur. The standardized configs make sure that everything works and that users can't change it.

    --
    My journal has hot /. gossip.
  4. Re:daunting technical issues? by shaitand · · Score: 3, Interesting

    umm ok, last I checked it takes less than 5mins to write a shell script that uploads these logs in the background to an ftp. Pop it in a cron job and bam, all set.