Extract from Jim Gill’s article “3 Compliance Archiving Challenges with Modern Content Management Systems”
Proving regulatory compliance requires meticulous record keeping, including records of a company’s website and social media. Even if you follow each regulation carefully, without an immutable archive and corresponding audit trail, there is no way to confirm it to regulating bodies.
Many years ago, when the internet was new, organizations may have only had a handful of web pages to manage, and meeting compliance requirements might have been handled with screenshots or even physical printouts. But those days are long gone. Today’s advanced Content Management Systems (CMS) handle thousands of complex web pages for a single enterprise, but companies in highly regulated industries such as finance and insurance still have to maintain archives to meet their regulatory compliance obligations.
Four Examples of Regulation Requiring Archiving
FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06 specifically requires that any firm communicating with the public online retain records of communications related to its business.
FINRA Regulatory Notice 11-39 clarifies that “[w]hether a particular communication is related to the business of the firm depends upon the facts and circumstances [of the communication]. This analysis does not depend upon the type of device or technology used to transmit the communication.”
Links are potentially problematic too. Regulatory Notice 11-39 states that “Firms may not establish a link to any third-party site that the firm knows or has reason to know contains false or misleading content. A firm should not include a link on its website if there are any red flags that indicate the linked site contains false or misleading content.”
