Secure Communication Monitoring features

Back to Secure Communication Monitoring products

Systems that capture, archive, and monitor electronic communications including email, chat, and voice to ensure compliance with recordkeeping requirements and prevent inappropriate communications.

We ask vendors to mark their product against our feature list. It is not available for all products and in some cases we have derived data from publicly available sources. The list of features follows. Vendors can add a further 10 key features of their own.

Communication Channel Coverage

Range and integration quality of communication channels monitored by the product.

Cloud App Integration: Integrates with SaaS communication tools.
Custom Channel Support: Option to configure and monitor bespoke channels.
Email Monitoring: Can capture and analyze email communications from various providers.
Instant Messaging Monitoring: Supports chat applications like Bloomberg, Teams, Slack, and WhatsApp.
Legacy System Integration: Compatibility with on-premise and older systems.
Mobile Device Integration: Ability to monitor communications on mobile platforms.
Multi-Language Support: Understands and processes communications in multiple languages.
Real-time Data Capture: Ability to monitor and capture communications in real time.
SMS/Text Message Monitoring: Captures and analyzes text messages including SMS and MMS.
Social Media Monitoring: Monitors platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Video Conferencing Monitoring: Supports monitoring of Zoom, WebEx, and similar video platforms.
Voice Communication Monitoring: Records and analyzes voice calls for compliance.

Data Security

Mechanisms to protect the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of data exchanged and stored by the solution.

Anonymization/Pseudonymization: Ability to anonymize or pseudonymize sensitive data for compliance.
Audit Logging: Maintains secure logs of all actions and changes for audit trail.
Compliance with Standards: Adheres to recognized security standards such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Monitors and prevents unauthorized data exfiltration.
Data Masking: Ability to mask sensitive data to prevent unauthorized disclosure.
Data at Rest Encryption: Protects stored data from unauthorized access using encryption.
End-to-End Encryption: Ensures all data transmissions are encrypted between communicating parties.
Granular Access Controls: Fine-grained user and role-based access permissions.
Intrusion Detection: Monitors data environments for signs of intrusion or compromise.
Key Management: Robust system for managing encryption keys, including rotation and revocation policies.
Multi-Factor Authentication: Requires multiple forms of authentication for system access.
Secure APIs: APIs are protected with authentication and rate-limiting to prevent abuse.
Security Patch Management: Ensures prompt deployment of security updates and patches.
Transport Layer Security (TLS): Utilizes TLS protocols for secure communications.
Zero Trust Architecture: Implements principles of zero trust to restrict lateral movement and access.

Integration & Interoperability

Ease of integration with existing IT, compliance, HR, and analytics systems.

Active Directory Compatibility: Syncs with corporate directory and identity management solutions.
Custom Integration Support: Provides professional services for custom integrations.
Data Export Capabilities: Supports export of raw and processed data to external systems.
HR System Integration: Ability to import user/entity metadata from HR databases.
Open API: Comprehensive API for integrating with other enterprise systems.
SIEM Integration: Integrates with Security Information and Event Management tools.
Third-party Marketplace Connectors: Integration-ready connectors for popular SaaS and compliance tools.
Webhook Notifications: Supports real-time event notification through webhooks.

Privacy & Ethical Controls

Functions to respect user privacy and adhere to internal/external ethical codes.

Access Review Automation: Monitors and reports on who accesses what data and when.
Data Minimization: Collects and retains only necessary data.
Employee Consent Management: Tracks and enforces employee consent for monitored channels.
Ethical Filtering: Opportunities to exclude personal or confidential discussions from monitoring.
Privacy Notices and Disclosures: Built-in mechanisms for notifying monitored users.
Privacy-by-Design Features: Default settings and architectures protect user privacy.
Redaction Tools: Ability to redact data from records before access or sharing.
Right to be Forgotten: Supports deletion of records upon legitimate requests.

Regulatory Compliance

Supports and simplifies adherence to financial regulations and industry standards.

Automated Compliance Reporting: Generates reports and monitoring summaries for auditors and regulators.
Certification Documentation: Provides compliance certificates and documentation support.
Data Sovereignty Controls: Ensures data remains within legally required geographic boundaries.
Exportable Audit Trails: Easily exportable, immutable logs to share with regulators.
GDPR Support: Facilitates privacy and data protection under the European GDPR.
MiFID II Compliance: Ensures monitoring features enable compliance with MiFID II.
Pre-configured Policy Templates: Templates for standard compliance monitoring based on best practices.
Retention Policy Management: Configurable message retention periods for regulatory requirements.
SEC/FINRA Compliance: Features suited for SEC/FINRA communication surveillance requirements.
Workflow for Legal Hold: Supports litigation hold requirements on communication records.

Reporting & Visualization

Advanced reporting and visualization tools for compliance status, trends, and investigations.

Access Control on Reports: Limits report access by user/role.
Custom Report Builder: Easy-to-use interface for generating tailored reports.
Data Visualization Tools: Graphs, heatmaps, and other visual tools to spot trends.
Drill-Down Capabilities: Ability to investigate from aggregated data down to individual messages.
Export to Multiple Formats: Reports can be exported to PDFs, Excel, CSV, etc.
Historical Data Comparison: Compare metrics and alert rates over different timeframes.
Regulatory Filing Support: Templates and exports for regulatory reporting.
Scheduled Reporting: Automated delivery of regular reports to specified recipients.

Review and Investigation Tools

Functionality for investigators and compliance officers to manage alerts, review evidence, and collaborate.

Alert Workflow Management: Custom workflows for triaging and resolving flagged incidents.
Annotation and Tagging: Ability to annotate and tag communications for future reference.
Bulk Actions: Supports bulk tagging, commenting, escalation, or closure of alerts.
Case Management: Integrated dashboards for assigning, tracking, and closing compliance cases.
Collaboration Tools: Allows multiple reviewers to collaborate, communicate, and add notes.
Evidence Preservation: Capabilities to lock and secure critical evidence for legal or compliance needs.
Export and Print Options: Enables secure export or print of evidence for regulatory requests.
Keyword Highlighting: Highlights detected keywords and phrases in investigator view.
Search and Filtering: Advanced querying, filtering, and sorting for efficient review.
Time to Resolution: Average time taken to close an alert or investigation.

Risk Detection & Analytics

Capabilities to identify, assess, and flag potential compliance risks or suspicious communication patterns.

Automated Alert Generation: Automatically generates alerts for high-risk communications.
Behavioral Analytics: Identifies unusual behaviors such as off-channel or after-hours contact.
Customizable Risk Scoring: Assigns risk scores based on detected patterns and behaviors.
False Positive Reduction Tools: Features for tuning and fine-tuning engines to minimize false positives.
Insider Threat Detection: Flags activities indicative of insider threats or compliance breaches.
Keyword and Phrase Detection: Advanced filtering to detect sensitive, risky, or banned terms.
Machine Learning/AI Detection: AI-based pattern recognition for advanced risk insight and anomaly detection.
Natural Language Processing (NLP): Uses NLP to understand context and intent in communications.
Rule-Based Monitoring: Flexible creation of rules and scenarios for detection.
Sentiment Analysis: Determines sentiment/tone to help flag negative or escalating conversations.
Volume of Communications Processed: Maximum amount of data/messages processed per day.

Scalability & Performance

Ability to handle growing volumes and number of users without performance decline.

Cloud Deployment Options: Availability of cloud-native, on-premises, or hybrid deployment.
Data Storage Capacity: Maximum amount of data that can be stored.
Disaster Recovery: Built-in capabilities to recover from failures or outages.
Elastic Storage: Automatically scales storage with data growth.
High Availability: Designed for minimal downtime with autoscaling and redundancy.
Load Balancing: Distributes workload across resources to ensure stability.
Processing Speed: Average speed at which messages or records are processed.
User Scalability: Maximum concurrent or supported users.

Support & Maintenance

Quality and range of customer support, documentation, and service-level commitments.

24/7 Support Availability: Round-the-clock customer or technical support.
Dedicated Account Manager: Single point-of-contact for customer relationship.
Knowledge Base Access: Comprehensive support portal with documentation and FAQs.
Onboarding Assistance: Help with initial setup, configuration, and migration.
Regular Updates: Continuous improvement and maintenance with regular updates.
Service Level Agreement (SLA): Defined response and resolution times for support inquiries.
Training Options: Availability of live or web-based training sessions.
User Community: Active online community for sharing best practices and troubleshooting.

User Experience & Accessibility

Usability and accessibility of the interface for compliance teams, auditors, and administrators.

Accessibility Compliance: Adherence to standards such as WCAG for disabled users.
Customizable Views: Personalized dashboard, reporting, and alert configurations.
Intuitive Dashboard: Modern, clear user interface for quick overview and navigation.
Mobile Access: Ability to access monitoring functions from mobile devices.
Multi-Lingual Interface: User interface available in multiple languages.
Notification Preferences: Users can customize the types and frequency of alerts/notifications.
Role-Based Access Control: Functionality and access limited by user roles and permissions.
Self-Service Help/Training: Embedded support resources, tutorials, and documentation.
Single Sign-On (SSO): Integration with enterprise SSO providers for seamless access.

Features in Secure Communication Monitoring

for Risk & Compliance