I must say that after reading this document, I am pretty underwhelmed.  I spent several years working directly with many of the Wall Street firms on the issues related to electronic communication, supervision, and archiving in the wake of the landmark $1.4 billion conflict of interest settlement in the 2002-2004 timeframe and we still do a good bit of business there today.  During that time, I saw first-hand the costs, inefficiencies, and confusion about what to do/not do regarding adhering to the regulations that govern broker/dealer electronic communication.

So, after a couple years of work by the NYSE, NASD, lawyers, and the brokerage firms we have these broad "guidelines" published for comment. 

My favorite sentence has to be the last one in the document:

"…members are advised that this guidance does not serve to establish a safe harbor with respect to potential supervisory or compliance deficiencies."

Gee…thanks.

A key takeaway is that if a firm can’t supervise or review the messages (or if the sender can’t be identified), they should consider blocking them outright.  "Consider" now that is some strong language…even deciding how to define "electronic communications" took three hours according to this article on it in the New York Times.

It breaks down communications into external vs. internal with specific discussion of non-company email (personal), message boards, and e-faxes as well as the best approach to supervise them – lexicons, random review, or some combination thereof.

Wait…that’s what they have been doing all along.   Although now they have at least broadened the definition of what you have to monitor a bit further (personal email, personal phones, blogs, etc.) if they are used for business purposes.  Entertaining commentary on that via DealBreaker.

Regulation is important for sure especially in the securities industry where information flows alongside capital but I would have hoped for a little more clarity and forward thinking after this much effort.