FaceTime Communications and YellowJacket today announced a partnership to deliver an integrated messaging compliance solution for energy trading communications.
YellowJacket's IM transaction and interaction logs can now be seamlessly stored in IMAudditor, which also archives messages from Reuters and Bloomberg, in addition to traffic from other instant messaging and Unified Communications platforms.
YellowJacket, a subsidiary of IntercontinentalExchangeR (NYSE:ICE), is one of the most used over-the-counter (OTC) trading communications platforms with advanced functionality for complex derivative markets. FaceTime's IMAuditor is used by the world's largest financial and trading firms to secure and manage real-time communications, ensuring that instant messaging and Unified Communications are used in a compliant fashion.
A number of regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA) require that electronic communications, including instant messages related to trades or transactions, be recorded and stored. FERC, for example, defines instant messages and electronic communications as "book and record," and requires logging and auditing of transaction-related information. Incorporating YellowJacket IM logs within IMAuditor simplifies the search and eDiscovery of relevant messages and facilitates compliance in the event of an audit by regulatory bodies.
"We selected FaceTime's IMAuditor as our IM Security and Compliance solution because it had simply the best architecture for our environment", says Kim Kinser, Project Manager, Hess Energy Trading, "IMAuditor allows our traders and employees to use the best and most appropriate communications tools, from Yahoo, to Reuters and YellowJacket and for us to centrally archive the related data in a single, FSA compliant solution."
"This new partnership with YellowJacket demonstrates the value IMAuditor has for regulatory compliance," said Brian Babin, Director, Product Management of FaceTime Communications. "We designed IMAuditor specccifically for real-time communication eDiscovery and compliance. Incorporating YellowJacket logs into the IMAuditor respository not only centralizes and simplifies messaging management, but provides a single source for eDiscovery"
IMAuditor includes a host of features for eDiscovery and compliance management:
. Logging and archiving of real-time communications, from Microsoft OCS, IBM Lotus Sametime, public IM, and Blackberry PIN/SMS Messaging in tamper-resistant binary form.
. Import capabilities for Reuters Messaging and Bloomberg.
. Administration of ethical walls to enforce communications compliance standards between groups.
. Inline IM disclaimers configurable at the organization, group, and individual level.