IBM announces Vantage for IBM Connections and IBM Sametime

I often receive questions around governance and compliance for IBM Connections. Also for many years clients have had requirements around compliance for IBM Sametime. Being able to track who said what and when; real time review and capture based on keywords, phrases etc; or to just be able to find information is a legal discovery process, are important requirements for many organisations.

So IBM seems to have addressed some of these areas by partnering with Actiance to release Version 1 of Vantage for IBM Connections and IBM Sametime.

Vantage for IBM Sametime and IBM Connections provides a compliance solution that is up-to-date on the dynamic and interactive communication channels a social business leverages. No matter how small or out-of-context a remark or comment might be, every post can be captured and put into the larger context of a holistic compliance solution for the social business.

Additional compliance capabilities of Vantage for IBM Connections:

• Automated logging of all IBM Connections end-user events (wikis, blogs, forum, activities, communities, profiles, bookmarks, and files)
• Real-time content inspection by keywords, lexicons, restricted phrases, regular expressions, user, type, and date range, that helps enable compliance personnel to easily locate relevant data, and helps to significantly reduce risk by allowing organizations to remove inappropriate content quickly
• Logs and archives original format and images of posts within IBM Connections; real-time review in the context of how they were posted in chronological order that helps to make the legal discovery, review, and reporting process simpler and less costly
• Simple creation and enforcement of granular policies on which content to capture that helps enable organizations to more effectively manage their compliance program
• Global and group role-based access control helps strengthen and simplify an organization's ability to comply with regulations

Additional compliance and security capabilities of Vantage for IBM Sametime:

• Real-time monitoring with alerts of instant messaging and content within file transfers
• Real-time reporting and archiving, granular content filtering rules and event auditing
• Real-time inspections that trigger alerts based on phrases, keywords, or regular expressions significantly reducing risk
• Virus and malware scanning of file transfers
• Creation and enforcement of ethical walls between users and groups
• Monitoring, logging, archiving, and feature controls for federated public Instant Messaging (IM) networks
• Global, group, and employee role-based access control that helps strengthen an organization's ability to comply with regulations
• Monitor, record, export instant messaging, group chat, IBM Sametime Advanced FAQ, announcements, and meeting activity to help ensure that all relevant communications can be retrieved when needed
• Security-rich, intuitive web-based administration and reporting of detailed usage by log in, message count, time interval, and IBM Sametime events
• Content inspection and drill down by keywords, user, type, and date range that helps enable compliance personnel to easily find a precise piece of content
• Create and enforce granular policies of which content to capture that helps allow organizations to effectively manage their compliance program
• Through content filtering, helps prevent data leakage over IBM Sametime and federated public IM platforms

Vantage for IBM Connections and Vantage for IBM Sametime are critical components designed to help all organizations, regardless of industry protect corporate brand and reputation, ensure ethical practices, and maintain compliance with regulations and legislation.

More information on the annoucement can be found here.

This need for better compliance and governance is not isolated to IBM's social platforms but it is good to see IBM reacting to provide a solution in this space.