SEC Fines Six Wall Street Firms for Not Retaining Emails
AtNewYork.com reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission fined six Wall Street firms for deleting employee email messages in violation of regulations. According to the article, "SEC regulations require securities firms to keep all business records, including e-mails, for three years. However, Wall Street and the SEC have sparred over what exactly is required in e-mail retention policies."
In our business dealings with financial services firms, we have noticed that email is often deleted after only 90 days. The stated justification for this is the amount of disk storage required to archive all employee email. However, many employees at these companies feel that email deletion is a priority only because email archives make legal departments nervous. It's interesting to hear that the SEC requirement may actually be considerably longer than current email retention policies would otherwise indicate.