Chat. Such a brief little word, suggesting something ephemeral, inconsequential… throwaway remarks and trivial content, that even in the business world feels closer to a post-it note than an email.
Today chat is used across organisations for every purpose: internal technology teams brainstorming on Slack, wealth managers making investment recommendations on Microsoft Teams, or customer support on RingCentral Glip. The tools we use for chat do everything from sharing links and documents to posting animated gifs and reactions as well as circulating videos and mp3s. It’s a productivity enhancer for internal collaboration, particularly in distributed organisations, and increasingly a channel for customer service and new business development externally. Chat has become an essential tool for the way we work and get things done today.
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Rosa Lear[/caption]
However, even if chat lacks the formality and tone of other kinds of written business communication, it still has a consequence and carries its own weight, both from a compliance and regulatory perspective, as well as from a brand reputation perspective.
Theta Lake’s automated review and analysis solution helps organisations understand the compliance risks associated with their chat interactions, and ensures that all communications are safely supervised and retained in line with applicable regulations and policies.
This can mean the removal of personal identifying content, as VP of Marketing, Rosa Lear, explained: “People need to understand that chat can be a real data loss threat, when people share information casually — here’s an account number, here’s a link to my personal file sharing account… That has to be edited before being stored.
“Everything that goes into our software suite is scanned for PII (Personally Identifiable Information), but we go further — for example, if someone shares a link, we automatically check the destination for anything inappropriate, and we scan any documents or assets shared in the chat too.”
Understanding chat conversations
Interpreting the risk profile of chat content means parsing the meaning of content as a whole, and requires intelligent automation which understands the kind of natural language people use, particularly in this easygoing medium.
