Smarsh, a provider of managed email archiving and compliance solutions, introduced text message archiving to its platform today. With the new feature, companies can capture, index, monitor, preserve and produce SMS text messages, BlackBerry PIN-to-PIN and BlackBerry Messenger content for regulatory audits, e-discovery requests and other corporate governance uses.
The solution, powered by technology from TextGuard, a mobile communication compliance solution provider, is deployed at both the server and handset client level.
“More than 822 billion text messages were sent and received in the last half of 2009 in the U.S. – roughly 5 billion per day – and smart phones like the BlackBerry are the ubiquitous accessory of the on-the-go business professional,” said Smarsh founder and CEO Stephen Marsh.
Mobile messaging content, like other forms of electronic communication, is subject to electronic discovery rules which require organizations to manage and produce electronically stored information (ESI) in a timely and complete manner during litigation.
Organizations in highly regulated industries, such as government or financial services, are obligated to preserve communications and to produce these messages when necessary. In addition, SEC and FINRA regulations require financial services firms to regularly review their representatives’ electronic messages, document these visual inspections and note any actions that result.
The Smarsh suite of hosted electronic message archiving solutions also includes email, instant messaging, social media and Bloomberg messaging.
With the new mobile messaging module, Smarsh provides firms with a disaster recovery solution for all smart phones in the organization. The platform immediately backs up messages, and associated data can be retrieved if an individual device is lost or stolen.
The solution provides archiving for SMS text messages, BlackBerry PIN-to-PIN communication and BlackBerry Messenger content. It supports BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile operating systems. The company says that iPhone support will be available soon.