Written by a human
In brief:
- It’s taken too long to dawn on some organizations that message archiving is a regulatory requirement and that poor archiving practices can lead to real, long-lasting consequences
- Recordkeeping rule violations carry serious consequences for individuals as well as the wider organization, meaning non-compliance is not an option
- Legal, Compliance, HR, and Data Science teams, among others, can all gain significant benefits from a secure, powerful, and confidential archiving solution
Regulatory scrutiny around data retention is at an all-time high in 2025, with financial watchdogs like Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) ramping up audits and issuing record fines for non-compliance.
For IT professionals, compliance officers, and business owners, the stakes are clear: failing to implement robust message archiving can lead to financial consequences by way of hefty penalties, as well as lasting reputational damage.
Why message archiving matters in 2025
Message archiving refers to the secure, long-term storage of electronic communications in a way that ensures these records can be retrieved quickly and reliably when needed. In today’s digital business landscape, message archiving includes SMS archiving, email archiving, and instant message archiving through apps like WeChat and WhatsApp.
Robust message archiving is no longer optional for organizations in regulated industries, as we’ve seen in countless cases in recent years. Just last year, the SEC hit six big credit rating agencies with huge fines amounting to $49 million in total for failing to maintain and preserve electronic communications made through texts, WhatsApp, WeChat, and personal mobile devices.
So, what do the regulations say about electronic message archiving?
In the U.S., Section 17(a)1 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and, in turn, Rule 17g-2(b)(7) requires:
“Nationally recognized statistical ratings organization and other regulated entities to make and keep for prescribed periods such records, and furnish copies thereof, as required by Commission rules.”
FINRA Rule 3110 requires firms to retain and supervise business communications, including text message archiving and collaboration platform data, for set periods.
Both the SEC and FINRA have demonstrated a clear commitment to enforcing these record-keeping rules and penalizing organizations for non-compliance.
But it’s not just fines that organizations that fail to comply run the risk of incurring. Poor message archiving practices can result in an organization’s inability to produce evidence during litigation. This presents a serious issue, yet it’s one that can be easily avoided by implementing an effective message archiving strategy.
Challenges in message archiving
Perhaps one of the reasons why so many organizations are falling foul of preserving and maintaining electronic messages in the correct way is the challenges that these practices face. Let’s take a look at these:
Managing multi-channel data: Today’s businesses communicate across a dizzying array of platforms; SMS, email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, and more. Capturing and storing all these formats requires flexible, comprehensive solutions. In particular, SMS archiving for financial services can be a challenge, especially when employees use personal devices.
Powerful searchability: With communication data growing exponentially, finding the right message at the right time is critical. Advanced, AI-powered search capabilities with intelligent analytics is now a must-have for fast and effective email archiving solutions, yet not all solutions on the market offer this.
Maintaining security: Sensitive business data must be protected at every stage, from capture through storage and retrieval. This means not only securing archives but also ensuring role-based access for the right employees, creating audit trails, and compliance with privacy laws.
Enforcing legal holds: Preventing accidental or purposeful deletion of data during a legal hold is imperative. The best archiving solutions enable make identifying, segregating, classifying, and sharing records for legal holds easy, and build regulatory compliance into workflows.
Benefits of effective message archiving
Investing in a modern message archiving platform delivers clear advantages to organizations that are proactive with their practices:
- Mitigate risk: Secure, organized, and searchable archives help organizations meet record-keeping requirements enforced by the SEC and FINRA among others. It also allows organizations to quickly find the right data during eDiscovery, audits, internal investigations and legal holds, minimizing the risk of penalties and sanctions.
- Streamline eDiscovery and supervision: AI-powered archiving platforms use machine learning to accelerate search, automate supervision, and surface potential risks across all communication channels. This gives users deep insight and helps employees work more efficiently, facilitating trust in your data.
- Support growing data volumes: As businesses scale, so does their communication data. Leading solutions offer elastic scalability, ensuring performance and reliability even as storage needs grow.
- Cost-effectiveness: Moving from traditional email servers to a cloud-based archiving solution means you can embed workspaces and workflows into your compliance efforts.
- Unified oversight: The best platforms provide a single interface for managing all archived content, whether that’s SMS, email or instant messages. This makes oversight and reporting far easier for compliance teams, who can search data and identify patterns and trends, leading to more informed employee decisions.
Final thoughts
In 2025, message archiving represents a cornerstone of risk management and operational efficiency. With regulators demanding more transparency and accountability, organizations need to ensure they’re capturing every relevant communication, from text messages to social media records.
But, archiving messages doesn’t have to be a burden for organizations, and in fact, it offers multiple advantages. A cloud-enabled, unified data strategy is critical to future-proofing your archive. Explore how Global Relay can help your organization stay compliant, secure, and ready for whatever comes next by booking a demo tailored to your organization.