On Friday, May 2, the SEC rule governing the logging and retention of electronic communications goes into effect. While the rule, known as SEC Rule 17a-4, references only “electronic communications,” both the NASD and NYSE have noted that instant messages fall under this umbrella. Over the last two years, IM has emerged as a key communications tool in the financial industry, bringing people together in real-time to meet ever-changing business demands. While the business value of IM is clear, the strict regulatory and compliance standards have made archiving and reporting IM usage an increasingly difficult task.

Gary Reifman is a co-founder and product manager for Messaging services at Communicator Inc, a provider of secure communications services to Fortune 1000 companies and cross-enterprise communities in industries such as financial services. At Communicator, Reifman helped build the Hub IM messaging service, which has met monitoring and logging compliance requirements since day one. Today, over 50,000 professionals at some of the world’s largest financial institutions use Communicator’s service. Reifman’s extensive experience helping financial services clients comply with SEC rules while leveraging the benefits of IM give him unique insight into issues surrounding 17a-4. Prior to Communicator Inc, Gary was a Vice President at Salomon Smith Barney in the Fixed Income Electronic Commerce unit where he was responsible for functional and creative design of the firm's fixed income electronic communications platform.

Reifman is available to discuss key issues of IM logging, including:

• What compliance solutions are in use on Wall Street?
• How does proper identity management make the process easier?
• What is involved in capturing, recording and storing IM messages/traffic so they can be easily and accurately archived and reviewed?
• How are Wall Street firms handling the new requirements?
• What policy considerations must be given to controlling who talks with whom?
• As instant messaging merges with other forms of communication, what unified technologies will aid in archiving and storing both IMs and other electronic messages?
• What can other industries learn from the Wall Street example?

To arrange for an interview with Gary Reifman, please call Marisa Dulyachinda or David Resnic at 781-684-0770 or send e-mail to communicator@schwartz-pr.com.

White Paper Available: Instant Compliance -- Three Steps You Can Take to Bring Instant Messaging into the Compliance Fold

About Communicator Inc
Communicator Inc provides communication, collaboration and content solutions that address the business and technology challenges of the extended enterprise. Organizations in financial services, government and life sciences, among other industries, often have difficulty securing their communications and access to information across disparate systems, and managing identities of employees, customers and partners. In addition, multi-enterprise communities introduce security and compliance challenges that fundamentally cannot be managed internally by any one of the participating organizations. Communicator Inc, through its technology and managed services approach to federated identity management, content aggregation and real-time messaging, acts as a neutral third-party, connecting the right people to the right information in real-time. Communicator Inc is a privately held company headquartered in White Plains, New York. For more information, visit www.communicator.com, call 914-872-2800 or email info@communicator.com.

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