SEC New Marketing Rule: How to Ensure Advertising and Recordkeeping Compliance

In the 1960s, marketing looked very different from what it is today. Billboards and magazine advertisements have been replaced by social media posts, emails, influencer marketing, and endorsements. Even hashtags and comments on social media posts can be used for marketing purposes.

Investment firms and other financial institutions are subject to the strict recordkeeping and communication regulations laid out by both the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The goal of these regulations is to protect the industry and its customers—and both bodies are willing to impose hefty fines if they believe a firm has stepped out of line.

It’s crucial that financial services organizations adhere to official communications and recordkeeping rules. More than ever, the SEC (and other regulators) are scrutinizing how firms communicate with external stakeholders—and how they keep records of these communications.

When it comes to compliance, those working within heavily regulated industries are well accustomed to the constant introduction and updating of new legal rulings. Thankfully, technology keeps evolving in support of businesses to help make meeting these requirements an achievable and even streamlined process.

Modern enterprise necessitates the control of huge amounts of data. From creation through to storage and finally, safe disposal, information governance is the process of applying set rules and procedures to ensure the responsible management of this data.

Traditional discovery is the initial phase of litigation when all parties are required to provide records and evidence relevant to a specific case. However, thanks to the explosion of electronically stored information (ESI), discovery must now work alongside eDiscovery—a process that involves the identification, preservation, collection, retention, and review of data in an electronic format. This makes the discovery exponentially larger and more complex.

In the spring of 2021, Pagefreezer partnered with the Association of Corporate Counsel to examine how legal teams are dealing with new data sources, such as team collaboration tools (like Slack and Microsoft Teams) and video conferencing platforms (like Zoom).

Pagefreezer partnered with the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) to create a report that examines how in-house legal teams are dealing with modern data sources. The report, called the Collecting Online Data for eDiscovery & Litigation Readiness Report, surveyed 211 in-house counsels across 23 industries and 22 countries.

Organizations are embracing team collaboration tools at a rapid rate. However, the massive volumes of scattered data these platforms create can cause compliance issues that have the potential to spiral out of control. The smart solution? An enterprise-grade archiving solution that can help organizations collect, store, and monitor their collaboration data.

The Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) was developed to improve standards and set guidelines in the eDiscovery process. Created by George Socha and Tom Gelbmann, the EDRM illustrates the sequence of eDiscovery activities relating to a specific legal matter.