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Alerting and Workflow

How the system manages alerts, investigations, and incident resolution processes.

Alert Prioritization: System assigns levels (e.g., high/medium/low) to alerts.
Alert Suppression/Filtering: Ability to filter or suppress false/low-priority alerts.
Audit Trail: Full logging of actions and changes for regulatory evidence.
Case Management Integration: Enables creation and tracking of cases linked to alerts.
Customizable Workflow: Supports tailoring of review/investigation workflow steps.
Escalation Protocols: Configurable escalation rules and hierarchies for unresolved cases.
Notifications & Reminders: Automated email or in-app reminders for outstanding cases.
Real-time Alerting: Immediate flagging and notification of detected risks or violations.
Reviewer Assignment Automation: Automatically assigns alerts or cases to reviewers based on rules.
Reviewer Collaboration Tools: Enables teams to work together on case investigations.
SLA Management: Monitors and enforces service-level agreement timelines for investigations.

Communication Channel Coverage

Ensures surveillance tools monitor all relevant forms of electronic communications.

Application Support: Number of distinct communication applications supported for monitoring.
Attachment Analysis: Analyzes file attachments for potential violations.
Email Monitoring: Ability to capture and analyze email correspondence for compliance risks.
Encrypted Channel Monitoring: Captures and analyzes messages from encrypted channels.
Historic Data Import: Supports ingestion of historic communication data for analysis.
Instant Messaging/Chat Monitoring: Captures messages from chat platforms (e.g., Bloomberg, Teams, Slack) for surveillance.
Mobile Device Coverage: Ability to monitor communications across mobile devices.
Multilingual Coverage: Ability to monitor and analyze communications in multiple languages.
Real-time Monitoring Capability: Enables live or near-real-time capture and analysis of communication data.
Social Media Surveillance: Captures relevant external and internal social media posts.
Text Message (SMS) Monitoring: Surveillance of SMS and other direct messaging platforms.
Voice Surveillance: Monitors recorded voice calls for keywords or risk indicators.

Cost Transparency and Commercials

Total cost of ownership, predictability, and flexibility in pricing models.

Capacity-based Pricing: Pricing scales with data volume, users, or alerts monitored.
Contract Duration Flexibility: Variety of contract lengths available without penalties.
Discounts for Multi-year Commitments: Offers reduced rates for longer agreements.
Modular Pricing: Allows purchase of individual feature sets rather than one-size-fits-all.
Predictable Annual Increases: Stated percentage or cap on annual rate increases.
Support Included in Base Price: Customer support costs are included in base contract.
Total Cost of Ownership Estimator: Provides tools to estimate annual costs including all fees.
Transparent Billing: Billing statements break down all charges by feature/use.
Trial or Pilot Options: Offers low-risk pilots or trials before purchase.
Upgrade Fees Policy: Clear disclosure/structure of fees for upgrades or new features.

Data Management and Integration

Capabilities supporting ingestion, storage, retrieval, and integration with other systems.

APIs for Integration: Availability of APIs to integrate with other surveillance, archiving, or analytics platforms.
Custom Data Connectors: Enables creation of connectors for proprietary sources.
Data De-duplication: Removes duplicate messages to conserve storage and reduce noise.
Data Ingestion Speed: Rate at which new communication records can be ingested and indexed.
Database Support: Supports multiple types of databases (SQL, NoSQL, cloud-based, etc.).
Export Options: Support for exporting surveillance data in multiple formats (PDF, CSV, etc).
Metadata Enrichment: Adds useful metadata (e.g. sender, recipient, channel, time) for search and analytics.
SIEM Integration: Connects to Security Information and Event Management systems.
Search Performance: Time to retrieve results for complex queries over stored communications.
Storage Scalability: Ability to handle growing volumes of communications data.
Third-party Data Source Integration: Connects and correlates data from external vendors or sources.

Deployment and Scalability

Capabilities related to how the platform is deployed, scaled and maintained.

Cloud Deployment: Supports hosting in public or private cloud environments.
Concurrent Process Handling: Maximum number of concurrent data ingestion, processing or analytics tasks.
Deployment Time: Typical time to deploy solution from contract signing.
Elastic Scalability: Capacity to scale up/down seamlessly with changes in data volume or users.
High Availability/Failover: Built-in redundancy to minimize downtime and data loss.
Hybrid Deployment: Supports mixed cloud and on-premises configurations.
Multi-tenant Support: Ability to support multiple independent business units or organizations on a single platform.
On-premises Deployment: Allows fully onsite installation and management.
Resource Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of system resources and health.
System Uptime SLA: Guaranteed system availability as specified in SLA.
Zero Downtime Upgrades: Perform updates and upgrades without service interruption.

Detection and Analytics

Features supporting the detection of compliance violations and risk using various analytic techniques.

Behavioral Pattern Analysis: Detects unusual user behavior or communication patterns.
Custom Rule Creation: Allows users to define and adapt detection rules.
Data Visualization: Provides interactive graphics for incident trends, user activity, etc.
False Positive Reduction Rate: Capability of the system to decrease the rate of false positives.
Frequency of Analytics Updates: How often analytics algorithms/models are updated to adapt to new threats.
Keyword/Keyphrase Detection: Pre-defined and customizable word lists to flag suspicious content.
Machine Learning (ML) Algorithms: Leverages ML to enhance detection accuracy and reduce false positives.
Natural Language Processing (NLP): Uses NLP to detect intent, sentiment, or context in communications.
Regulatory Lexicon Library: Library of language and keywords for specific regulations (e.g., FINRA, SEC).
Risk Scoring: Assigns risk scores to incidents/messages for prioritization.
Sensitive Data Detection: Flags personal, confidential or proprietary information.

Regulatory Compliance Support

Options that ensure adherence to relevant industry standards and regulations.

Automated Regulatory Reporting: Creates and exports reports necessary for regulatory audits or filings.
Breach Notification Support: Helps organizations notify affected parties of regulatory breaches within mandated timelines.
Compliance Certifications: Holds certifications (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR) relevant to financial services.
Configurable Regulatory Frameworks: Allows mapping and customization for firm-specific compliance programs.
Legal Hold Management: Supports the ability to preserve data for future litigation as required.
Multi-jurisdictional Rules Support: Addresses regulatory requirements in multiple global jurisdictions.
Pre-built Compliance Rules: Comes with out-of-the-box detection rules for major regulatory bodies (FINRA, SEC, FCA, etc).
Redaction Tools: Redacts sensitive data in exported or shared communications.
Retention Period Length: Maximum length for which data can be retained for compliance.
Retention Policy Management: Implements and ensures compliance with data retention/archiving rules.
Supervisory Review Support: Tools to monitor adherence to supervisory review processes.

Reporting and Audit

Extensive reporting and robust audit capabilities for compliance and business needs.

Access Logging: Tracks all readings and exports of records.
Alert Disposition Metrics: Tracks status/outcome of all alerts for performance measurement.
Comprehensive Audit Logging: Logs all actions/events for forensic and compliance audits.
Custom Report Builder: Allows creation of user-defined reports on all surveillance data.
Data Extraction for Audits: Enables data extraction tailored to regulatory or internal audit requests.
Drill-down Analytics: Ability to explore details of flagged incidents/cases/reports.
Export Formats Supported: Number of different formats available for data export (PDF, CSV, etc).
Regulatory Reconciliation: Verifies reporting completeness and accuracy against regulatory requirements.
Report Delivery Channels: Multiple ways to send/deliver reports (email, dashboard, API, etc).
Reviewer Performance Reporting: Reports on productivity and consistency of review teams.
Scheduled Reporting: Supports automated, recurring report generation and delivery.

Security

Ensures that communication data and the surveillance system itself are properly protected.

Anomaly Detection: Automated detection of unusual access or usage patterns.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Prevents unauthorized sharing or downloading of sensitive communications.
Disaster Recovery/Backup Systems: Ensures protection and recovery of data in case of system failure.
Encryption At-Rest: Stored data is encrypted to protect against unauthorized access.
Encryption In-Transit: All communications data is encrypted during transmission.
Granular Permission Controls: Allows detailed definition of permissions at user or group level.
IP Whitelisting/Blacklisting: Restricts or allows system access based on IP addresses.
Intrusion Detection: Monitors the system for unauthorized access attempts or suspicious activity.
Regular Security Audits: Periodic third-party or internal security assessments performed.
Security Patch Frequency: Regular cadence for applying security patches and updates.
User Activity Monitoring: Continuously tracks and logs all significant user actions.

User Experience and Access Control

Encompasses usability of the system as well as control over user actions.

Accessibility Compliance: Meets accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG, ADA) for users with disabilities.
Audit Access Reporting: Logs and reports on user activity and access history.
Bulk Actions: Ability to perform actions on multiple records/cases simultaneously.
Configurable User Roles: System allows administrators to define custom roles.
Localization: User interface available in multiple languages.
Multi-factor Authentication (MFA): Requires multi-factor authentication for access.
Number of Concurrent Users Supported: Maximum number of users supported simultaneously without performance degradation.
Role-based Access Control (RBAC): Allows granular assignment of permissions based on role.
Search Functionality: Advanced and intuitive search/filtering for investigators.
Single Sign-On (SSO): Supports integration with enterprise SSO solutions.
User Interface Customization: Enables customization of UI elements and workflows.

Vendor Support and Maintenance

Quality and efficiency of vendor services that support long-term platform effectiveness.

24/7 Customer Support: Availability of round-the-clock technical assistance.
Bug Fix Response Time: Average time to acknowledge and resolve critical bugs.
Community/Forum Access: Customers can share best practices and ask questions in a user community.
Customization Services: Vendor can develop custom features according to client needs.
Dedicated Account Manager: Assignment of an account manager for ongoing relationship support.
Knowledge Base/Documentation: Comprehensive online guides and troubleshooting materials.
Named User Support: Offers support for specific, named contacts at customer firms.
Patch/Update Notification: Alerts users to upcoming or recent system changes.
Service Level Agreements (SLA): Well-defined SLAs for uptime, response, and issue resolution.
Training/Onboarding Services: Vendor provides training programs for customer teams.

Electronic Communications Surveillance features explained

for Compliance