The fines are hefty when companies fail to keep their email records in order. Five top Wall Street brokerage firms were fined a total of $8.25 million in December 2002 for not preserving email communications. In a statement issued at the time, the SEC, the New York Stock Exchange, and the NASD said, "Each firm had inadequate procedures and systems to retain and make accessible e-mail communications." Rules require the firms to keep such records for at least two years.
The discovery that the firms were not properly keeping communications was made as securities regulators probed the brokerages to find out whether analysts were pressured to issue overly bullish research to help win investment banking business.
"It's a doubled-edged sword for financial companies, as they must retain email for two years -- but they also want to eliminate smoking guns, so they want to keep the data only for as long as they have to," says Sanford. Digital archiving has "destruction management capabilities," notes KVS's Roberto. "So they can get rid of it as soon as is possible." [Ed. note: Where there's a will...]
This solution might be timely for the banks, but it's going to cost them an arm and a leg to implement. A single Centera system starts at $205,000 for 5 Tbytes of usable capacity. And you need two of these, by the way: One in your data center and one at an Iron Mountain facility. The total solution is probably pushing half a million dollars even before you throw in the software and services. Yowch!
However, argues Sanford, "that's nothing compared with the litigation exposure. This is a cookie-cutter offering that protects any financial institution." Interesting; so if the technology fails and emails get lost, and the SEC comes knocking on the door, can the bank blame EMC? A resounding "no" is the answer from all parties.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
