We recently released a new and greatly enhanced version of our Web Archiving offering. This latest version adds a true review workflow for compliance teams to utilize when proactive supervision and policy-enforcement is required for web content in addition to immutable retention.

Enabling the review capabilities and related workflow is the introduction of new metadata (status, flags and notes) that can now be updated and searched for archived web content as well as a significantly enhanced interface to drive the processes related to content review for compliance purposes. These advancements also provide tremendous value reactively for legal teams when responding to discovery events (audits, examinations, litigation preparedness, etc.) where the need to quickly and easily find, evaluate and produce archived web content is required.
 

What was the driver for this new release and set of capabilities?

Our customers tell us that archiving web content for compliance purposes is a growing need as they create and use more of this type of outward communications to grow their business and as the tools to produce it become easier to use – think blogs, microsites, etc. The ability to capture, retain and now actively review web content alongside all of the other content types supported by The Archiving Platform from Smarsh (email, instant and text messages, video and social media channels) is something they appreciate, as opposed to having to maintain a separate archiving silo and related systems to manage it.
 

What types of use-cases does this solve for?

One easy use-case to understand is a mortgage/lending entity advertising a certain rate (APR) on their website to attract customers and then not offering that rate when the application is made. By the time the client questions the practice, the mortgage/lending entity has typically removed or updated the content from their website. If that content had been archived along the way, as well as the recording of the date/time of the change, then the evidence would be preserved. If the mortgage/lending entity did make the change in the proper and timely manner, being able to report this sequence of events and reproduce the exact contents of the web pages in question would favor them in the matter.

We are also seeing growing interest in the supervision/review process for web content in the financial services industry. Within our installed base of customers, financial advisors often create and maintain their own micro sites and blogs, using modern website creation tools that don’t require much (if any) web programming (e.g. WordPress, SquareSpace, etc.). That content needs to be archived and supervised, in addition to the more traditional digital communications content, to stay compliant and ready to respond to a discovery event.

Learn more about this new version of our Web Archiving offering and the review process here.