A small but growing number of vendors are tackling the problem of exerting control over social networks within the financial services industry.
FaceTime Communications today entered that arena with the introduction of Socialite, a security management and compliance application for social networks.
Socialite is meant to provide very in-depth control over social networking applications, including the big three — Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. It’s available either as a software-as-a-service deployment or as an on-premises module within FaceTime’s Unified Security Gateway product.
The Unified Security Gateway system and other Facetime products are in use at dozens of large companies and financial services organizations.
Socialite will be deployed in a way that covers both a company’s on-network policy as well as a roaming policy for people off network (traveling or remote workers).
Socialite executives say their system allows for control of 95 different activities and content features across the three major social networks and allow for all of it to be archived.
“When it comes to the moderation of content we are capturing all of it in context — we see what else is on your Facebook page,” said Sarah Carter, a vice president at Facetime. Many of these features can be “blocked” or “allowed.”
In addition to the big three networks, the folks at Facetime said Socialite works with more than 1,000 less popular social media applications.
“We have also integrated very tightly with the major e-discovery and archiving vendors to insure compliance with SEC 17a and other regulations,” she added.
Recent changes, such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Advisory Regulatory Notice 10-06, issued guidance to securities firms and brokers on communicating with the public through social networking sites.
Among the specific features within Socialite that will be of interest to broker-dealers and registered investment advisers are identity management (ability to track users across multiple social media platforms), data leak prevention and the ability to control access to the thousands of applets available for Facebook.
A SaaS subscription to Socialite starts at $12 per user per month for 100 users. An on-premise installation starts at $5,000 for 100 users.
While Socialite is marketed as a comprehensive solution for both moderating and archiving social networks there are competitors, including Socialware and Arkovi.
For more information visit
Facetime online.
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