FCA Mobile Recording – Are Your Calls Protected?

In 2009 the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) unveiled legislation that required all calls between FCA regulated businesses and their clients to be recorded and stored. The idea was to securely collect conversation data, to ensure that market abuse was reduced and those who were responsible for mistreatment were punished. Mobile conversations were included in this, with calls, texts, instant messenger, social media and webmail all required to be monitored. Although an FCA regulation, mobile communication recording has very rarely been enforced, as the technology available up until now has been so poor. Thankfully this has changed.

The FCA are now clamping down. Technology in this area has evolved, with mobile recording technology now having caught up with mobile software, and so compliance has once again become a critical factor for regulated companies. Most don’t realise this and many will be using their Private Branch System (PBX) to route and record mobile calls. This internal telephone connection may well work well for office and external calls, but is not always a good fit for mobile. Another option for people has been to invest in expensive and unnecessary specialist SIM cards, a costly alternative that again has security pitfalls.

Recording your mobile call data

Although there are ways of recording your mobile call data, be it through rerouting through an internal system or investing in lesser market software, what is crucially missing from most company setups is protection. If your recordings are not encrypted with an industry standard encryption key then how accurate can you be sure they are? Without security measures in place your data can be tampered with, rendering your ‘evidence’ useless.

The FCA requires you to make sure that access to your recordings is audited and that a master recording is kept securely should it be needed for evidence. Is your company complying with this? The software you have may well record and store but most are incredibly weak, particularly in these areas. At Digital Pathways we have developed nMobile, a powerful and flexible mobile voice recording solution that not only collects data but also stores keys on a FIPs certified appliance, with our dedicated team auditing all access to the data.

So are you complying with Financial Conduct Authority legislation when it comes to mobile recordings, and if you are then can you guarantee their protection and authenticity? If not then Digital Pathways have the answer. Call us today to talk about nMobile and make sure that your mobile communication data is secure.