SunGard introduces social media surveillance tech

07 February 2011 | 11833 views | 3 keyboard 3

SunGard has launched a social media surveillance and compliance system to help firms monitor and archive content posted by staff on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The vendor says its Protegent Social Media Surveillance product helps firms manage supervisory regulatory obligations and enforce internal social media policies regardless of the device used to make the posts.

The technology - which was developed with Web archiving specialist SiteQuest - features integrated search and reporting, automated policy alerts, lexicon detection, approval workflow and e-mail notifications.

US regulatory body Finra issued guidance to securities firms and brokers last year on the use of social networking Web sites to communicate with the public.

SunGard says its new technology means financial services firms can manage the watchdog's requirements by tapping tools for moderation and pre-approval of content that may be considered advertisement. Meanwhile, alerting, reporting and archiving capabilities help firms adhere to books and records surveillance requirements.

The role of social media in advertising has also attracted the interest of UK authorities, with the FSA recently insisting financial firms must ensure they provide appropriate risk warnings when using new media to promote products and services.

Last week the difficulty banks are having in adapting to the Web 2.0 world was highlighted by the furore over Commonwealth Bank of Australia's imposition of a draconian new social media policy that held staff personally responsible for comments posted by the individual and their friends in online communities.

Comments: (3)

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Martin Davies - Causal Capital Pte Ltd - Singapore | 08 February, 2011, 03:04

As written : "SunGard has launched a social media surveillance and compliance system to help firms monitor and archive content posted by staff on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter."

Response: Come on guys, let's apply some logic here. George by day, Georgina in the evening; who is to know the lad and the lass are the same person?

If you wanted to post anonymously you just change your name, gender, race and location. You post as your avatar super hero personality, you can even post behind a free web proxy to confuse the ip addres or use no technology at all and have someone post for you - Dear Mr Breakipschitz can you post this for me and the weather in New York is wet how is it in Russia?

The rest of the tool is ideal for scanning the net for content about the host firm but let's not read too much into this.

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Ketharaman Swaminathan - GTM360 Marketing Solutions - Pune | 08 February, 2011, 09:41

Agreed that people can post anonymously or with fictitious names but firms only have to worry about situations where the regulator links objectionable posts to the firms, which can only happen when the said content is posted by employees using their real names. Tools like HEATMAP360 - and I'm sure Sungard's Protegent Social Media Surveillance - can surely prove effective to firms within this domain.

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Rex Gooch - SunGard - New York | 11 February, 2011, 17:17

This solution is intended to provide surveillance capabilities for firms who need to monitor their financial advisors. Firms are responsible for advisors who violate sales practice policies by making misleading or inaccurate statements which might lead someone to make an inappropriate investment decision. In these scenarios the advisor doesn't benefit by making posts anonymously or with fictitious names.

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