Smarsh, the industry leader in enabling organizations to easily manage risk and uncover the value within their communications data, announced that they have entered into an agreement to acquire TeleMessage, a global leader in mobile messaging and voice capture and archiving.
Regulatory compliance for mobile devices has been a challenge for many organizations. Many employees have both Corporate and “Bring Your Own” Devices and use both business and consumer messaging apps to communicate with their colleagues and customers. Historically firms had to engage a fragmented landscape of providers to adequately cover their risks. As a result, many companies simply had “gaps” in their compliance.
With this acquisition, Smarsh will combine mobile carrier partnerships in North America, EMEA and Asia, and extend its ability to store and monitor employee communications on the latest consumer applications such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, Signal, and other popular Mobile IM apps.
“Highly regulated firms have always needed to capture and retain their digital communications for regulatory compliance, legal discovery, and to protect their brand,” said Goutam Nadella, Chief Product Officer at Smarsh. “However, given the new hybrid workforce and how digitally connected everyone is, it’s more challenging than ever to monitor all the new voice and text channels. Simply put, firms everywhere are overwhelmed by all the new channels – like WhatsApp, WeChat and more effective coverage for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) models – that are necessary for business but pose real risks, because of their variety and the volume and velocity of the data they produce. One of the biggest areas of risk is mobile communications.”
The acquisition of TeleMessage will strengthen the undisputed Smarsh leadership in helping customers to meet their global regulatory compliance requirements within the SEC, FINRA, Dodd-Frank, MIFID, FCA, IIROC, and others