Whoops: Morgan Stanley did it Again!

Information Week is reporting that The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said Morgan Stanley has to pay $12.5 million in fines to resolve charges that it mishandled email.

The gist of the story is FIRA found Morgan Stanley negligent of improper email handling on several occasions. The reasons given seem related to technology failure and inconsistent policies.

I feel sorry for the rank and file IT people who are undoubtedly caught in the cross-fire over how Morgan Stanly should have managed email and archiving, especially the history this firm has with email compliance. It appears there are systemic technology and business process problems that need to be resolved.

How about this solution?

Create a simple and enforceable email retention policy that dictates all messages sent or received on company systems will be saved for seven years. No exceptions, and there is no ambiguity.

Use a hosted archive system to gather, protect, index and securely save every message in three geographically separate data center locations. Emails can be immediately searched and made available for any reason.

The above is what Sonian is all about. And Sonian can provide all this functionality for a few percent of that total whopping fine.