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).

If you're familiar with Microsoft Teams, you probably know about its built-in archive feature. By visiting the Microsoft Teams Admin Center (you need to be a Teams administrator to do this), you can quickly archive a team, which removes it from the active list and makes it read-only.

The adoption rate of Microsoft Teams over the last few years has been nothing short of astonishing. In 2019, just prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft's collaboration platform had around 20 million users. As of 2022 (the most recent stats available), the number of active users sits at 270 million! This incredible growth is a testament to the benefits that Teams offers organizations—especially in an environment where many employees are working remotely.

Pagefreezer now offers Microsoft Teams archiving as part of its legal and compliance solutions.

Any business that deals with sensitive information needs a document retention policy. Does your business have staff you keep records on, for example? If so, your business deals with sensitive information.

Building websites used to require a lot of time, knowledge, and manual coding. But with today's sophisticated content management systems (CMSs), building and managing a website is much easier. While customizing features may require technical know-how, the general rule is that most websites are built and powered by an intuitive and user-friendly CMS. However, CMSs were not expressly designed for archiving data. Storing CMS data requires more than hitting save when updating a page. A CMS is not an archive system; your website data isn't necessarily automatically saved in versions—nor is the backup data easy to access. That means you may struggle to identify and access the backed-up data you want to access. Hence, it's best to have a system dedicated to archiving and backups.

The healthcare industry has come up against unprecedented pressure in recent years. Digital transformation has had a significant role to play when it comes to creating the efficiency needed to deal with the challenges of a global pandemic, in addition to the other mounting challenges of aging populations, staffing shortages, rising costs, and regulatory changes.

Some of the most fundamental qualities of effective government are transparency and trust. You’ve undoubtedly worked hard to create engaging comms and programs to serve the public and engage them in dialogue, all with the goal of building trust.

At the end of 2021, J.P. Morgan Securities (JPMS) agreed to pay $200 million to resolve charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It would pay the SEC $125 million and the CFTC $75 million.