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LiveOffice Adds Backup to E-Mail Storage System
By Cory Levine
June 21, 2006
The ghost of Morgan Stanley's e-mail debacles is haunting the floor of this year's SIA Technology Management Conference. The firm closed one
chapter of its e-mail horror story in May with a $15 million settlement with the SEC for violating e-mail retention rules, but it isn't out
of the spotlight yet. And with all of the publicity given to Morgan Stanley's electronic communication woes, vendors are on the floor in
force to tout their retention, discovery and security solutions.
Torrance, Calif.-based LiveOffice (booth 2119) is releasing version 5.0 of its AdvisorMail hosted messaging archiving solution. AdvisorMail features monitoring, search, archiving and retrieval functionalities that enable financial services firms to comply with various mandates, including SEC rules 17a-3 and 17a-4, the USA Patriot Act, and individual NYSE and NASD requirements. AdvisorMail 5.0 also offers mailbox management, which allows for the automatic offloading of data from a firm's mail server to a secure LiveOffice data center. The product also provides Web-based disaster recovery functionality.
LiveOffice believes that AdvisorMail's value is in the ability to outsource a firm's e-mail management responsibilities. But whether or not the SEC sees the "e-mail management responsibility" idea in the same way still remains to be seen, say industry observers.
While LiveOffice claims to have traction among the top 50 U.S. broker-dealers, it also reports working extensively with the widespread and mobile workforces of registered investment advisers - the type of clients that logistically can't comply without a helping hand.
"A lot of these guys have been trying to do this in-house on their own, ... and as the audits pick up with their level of interrogation and requirements, some of the people that I've met have said they need help," says Mary Cilva, AdvisorMail product manager for LiveOffice. "They don't want to be an IT shop." And with AdvisorMail, they don't have to be, she adds.
"A lot of organizations ... are starting to take a look and say, 'Well, this is a good risk mitigation strategy,'" adds Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research. "Organizations are realizing that they have an increasing chance of going through a regulatory audit, and the SEC is generally very impatient."
Another new e-mail management solution on the floor this year is ComplianceNOW version 2.0 from Renew Data Corp. of Austin, Texas (booth 4500). Like most e-mail compliance solutions, ComplianceNOW offers the capture and preservation of electronic communications. But the tool is designed with a very specific user in mind - the corporate lawyer. The main function of ComplianceNOW is legal discovery and the ability to produce necessary communication when a regulatory audit comes down the line.
"Our competitors are typically coming from an information technology background," explains Allan Brooks, VP of marketing and engineering for Renew Data. "Our company began in the legal services market. We approach the problem from a completely different viewpoint."
ComplianceNOW version 2.0 has been upgraded with a new workflow system to circumvent paper- and spreadsheet-based forms, and a review tool that integrates into a company's compliance archive, according to Brooks. The new version also is capable of integrating human resources data and creating associations between that data and electronic communications, facilitating the discovery process for a firm's legal team, he adds.
For Houston-based investment bank Growth Capital Partners, e-mail compliance is imperative because a violation via e-mail typically is indicative of something larger, according to Stephanie Malone, the firm's CFO. "Generally, e-mail violations aren't a standalone violation. Usually it piggybacks onto something else," says Malone, who uses the current version of ComplianceNOW for the firm's compliance efforts. If an e-mail breaches regulation, she asserts, typically it is because that message is evidence of a larger crime.
Malone praises Renew Data, stressing the firm's punctuality. "They are the only IT company that we've worked with that has come in absolutely on schedule. I mean, they were on schedule to the minute," she says. Growth Capital Partners plans to upgrade to version 2.0 of ComplianceNOW, but will likely wait until the end of the year. "Since we are due for audit this year, we don't want to risk anything," explains Malone.
But Malone brings to bear an important point about e-mail compliance. The whole purpose for regulating e-mail is to monitor the content. Financial services employees have access to volumes of privileged data, and securing that data as it comes and goes at light speed is essential.
With that in mind, Dallas-based Zix Corp. (booth 3504) is launching a new e-mail encryption tool, ZixDirect. Sending and receiving encrypted e-mail can be a hassle for enterprise users, and many solutions confound users with extra steps and processes to read a simple message. "E-mail encryption can be a difficult process - a lot of times more for the recipient than the sender," says Dena Bauckman, director of product management for Zix.
"In the financial industry, a lot of what drives the business requirements and justifies the use of e-mail encryption is based on the need to protect customer information," continues Bauckman. "There is a risk and liability in sending out information on customers and not having it encrypted."
Typical encryption tools send a link to the recipient, which directs the user to a Web portal to view secured messages. This extra step can be a hassle, as can viewing e-mail through a Web browser, says Bauckman, who points to the rising threat of phishing as a primary concern about sending Web links via e-mail.
Rather than accessing a Web portal, ZixDirect attaches HTML code to secured messages that are delivered directly to a mailbox. When delivered and run, the attachment automatically decrypts the e-mail for the reader, Bauckman relates. Users must be authorized to read the message, which requires registration with Zix.
Bauckman contends that ZixDirect's value and low total cost of ownership are a result of the product being offered as a service, and the modest implementation period of just a single day.
With all of the e-mail compliance solutions on hand at this year's show, there will be no excuse for financial services firms to falter on archiving, securing and retrieving electronic messages. The options are numerous, and as evidenced by Morgan Stanley, the penalties for failure are stiff.
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Torrance, Calif.-based LiveOffice (booth 2119) is releasing version 5.0 of its AdvisorMail hosted messaging archiving solution. AdvisorMail features monitoring, search, archiving and retrieval functionalities that enable financial services firms to comply with various mandates, including SEC rules 17a-3 and 17a-4, the USA Patriot Act, and individual NYSE and NASD requirements. AdvisorMail 5.0 also offers mailbox management, which allows for the automatic offloading of data from a firm's mail server to a secure LiveOffice data center. The product also provides Web-based disaster recovery functionality.
LiveOffice believes that AdvisorMail's value is in the ability to outsource a firm's e-mail management responsibilities. But whether or not the SEC sees the "e-mail management responsibility" idea in the same way still remains to be seen, say industry observers.
While LiveOffice claims to have traction among the top 50 U.S. broker-dealers, it also reports working extensively with the widespread and mobile workforces of registered investment advisers - the type of clients that logistically can't comply without a helping hand.
"A lot of these guys have been trying to do this in-house on their own, ... and as the audits pick up with their level of interrogation and requirements, some of the people that I've met have said they need help," says Mary Cilva, AdvisorMail product manager for LiveOffice. "They don't want to be an IT shop." And with AdvisorMail, they don't have to be, she adds.
"A lot of organizations ... are starting to take a look and say, 'Well, this is a good risk mitigation strategy,'" adds Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research. "Organizations are realizing that they have an increasing chance of going through a regulatory audit, and the SEC is generally very impatient."
Another new e-mail management solution on the floor this year is ComplianceNOW version 2.0 from Renew Data Corp. of Austin, Texas (booth 4500). Like most e-mail compliance solutions, ComplianceNOW offers the capture and preservation of electronic communications. But the tool is designed with a very specific user in mind - the corporate lawyer. The main function of ComplianceNOW is legal discovery and the ability to produce necessary communication when a regulatory audit comes down the line.
"Our competitors are typically coming from an information technology background," explains Allan Brooks, VP of marketing and engineering for Renew Data. "Our company began in the legal services market. We approach the problem from a completely different viewpoint."
ComplianceNOW version 2.0 has been upgraded with a new workflow system to circumvent paper- and spreadsheet-based forms, and a review tool that integrates into a company's compliance archive, according to Brooks. The new version also is capable of integrating human resources data and creating associations between that data and electronic communications, facilitating the discovery process for a firm's legal team, he adds.
For Houston-based investment bank Growth Capital Partners, e-mail compliance is imperative because a violation via e-mail typically is indicative of something larger, according to Stephanie Malone, the firm's CFO. "Generally, e-mail violations aren't a standalone violation. Usually it piggybacks onto something else," says Malone, who uses the current version of ComplianceNOW for the firm's compliance efforts. If an e-mail breaches regulation, she asserts, typically it is because that message is evidence of a larger crime.
Malone praises Renew Data, stressing the firm's punctuality. "They are the only IT company that we've worked with that has come in absolutely on schedule. I mean, they were on schedule to the minute," she says. Growth Capital Partners plans to upgrade to version 2.0 of ComplianceNOW, but will likely wait until the end of the year. "Since we are due for audit this year, we don't want to risk anything," explains Malone.
But Malone brings to bear an important point about e-mail compliance. The whole purpose for regulating e-mail is to monitor the content. Financial services employees have access to volumes of privileged data, and securing that data as it comes and goes at light speed is essential.
With that in mind, Dallas-based Zix Corp. (booth 3504) is launching a new e-mail encryption tool, ZixDirect. Sending and receiving encrypted e-mail can be a hassle for enterprise users, and many solutions confound users with extra steps and processes to read a simple message. "E-mail encryption can be a difficult process - a lot of times more for the recipient than the sender," says Dena Bauckman, director of product management for Zix.
"In the financial industry, a lot of what drives the business requirements and justifies the use of e-mail encryption is based on the need to protect customer information," continues Bauckman. "There is a risk and liability in sending out information on customers and not having it encrypted."
Typical encryption tools send a link to the recipient, which directs the user to a Web portal to view secured messages. This extra step can be a hassle, as can viewing e-mail through a Web browser, says Bauckman, who points to the rising threat of phishing as a primary concern about sending Web links via e-mail.
Rather than accessing a Web portal, ZixDirect attaches HTML code to secured messages that are delivered directly to a mailbox. When delivered and run, the attachment automatically decrypts the e-mail for the reader, Bauckman relates. Users must be authorized to read the message, which requires registration with Zix.
Bauckman contends that ZixDirect's value and low total cost of ownership are a result of the product being offered as a service, and the modest implementation period of just a single day.
With all of the e-mail compliance solutions on hand at this year's show, there will be no excuse for financial services firms to falter on archiving, securing and retrieving electronic messages. The options are numerous, and as evidenced by Morgan Stanley, the penalties for failure are stiff.
« BACK