SEC Rule 17a-3 & FINRA Records Retention Requirements Explained

Financial industry recordkeeping regulatory requirements like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Rules 17a-3 and 17a-4, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Rules 4511 and 2210, play a crucial role in maintaining the integrity of the U.S. financial markets. These regulations are not just bureaucratic formalities; their oversight involves ensuring that financial services firms adhere to stringent record retention requirements, essential for the transparency, accountability, and trust that underpin the financial system.

If you’re trying to archive your website, whether for litigation readiness, corporate heritage, or you are just trying to make sure your website is compliant with your industry’s regulatory requirements, you will likely encounter a little ol’ file type called WARC (Web ARChive).

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as a cloud service comes with a few native tools for short-term back-ups and version control. But if you’re looking to create a legally-admissible, compliant archive of your AEM website content, Adobe itself warns that these features are, “not intended as an audit log or for legal purposes.”

How do Federal agencies like NASA, the Department of Education, and the Department of Homeland Security capture and manage social media records? To uncover this, in 2022 The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) conducted an assessment of the policies, practices, and procedures related to the use of social media for 10 federal agencies, including the aforementioned and NARA itself. In September 2023, NARA released the findings in the “Managing Social Media Records: Records Management Assessment Report.”