Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, today announced the availability of Autonomy Social Media Governance, the industry’s first solution designed to monitor, govern, and protect organizations across social media channels. Autonomy Social Media Governance extends Autonomy’s market-leading supervision, policy, and compliance platform – used today by the world’s leading corporations – to enable businesses to maintain compliance with new regulatory requirements for employees engaging on social media sites.

Rapid adoption of social media by employees, customers, advertisers, bloggers, and news organizations presents unique challenges to many organizations. Regulators recognize the influence and risks associated with these channels, and are starting to require organizations to actively monitor and govern employees’ social media interactions. For instance, FINRA (The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) recently issued FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06, which requires member firms to supervise and archive content posted to social media for business purposes. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the National Futures Association (NFA) are also developing rules associated with the use of social media.

New regulatory requirements around social media add to the already burdensome task of adhering to current law for organizations – which requires that corporations archive, set policy, and make discoverable many forms of electronic information, including email, audio, and video. Autonomy is the clear leader in information governance, with over ten years of experience in helping the world’s leading organizations maintain compliance with the constantly evolving set of regulatory requirements, which span an increasingly diverse set of communications channels.

Social media represents an extremely important new channel for businesses to develop engaging and profitable relationships with their customers. However, it is not without its risks, and for a business to leverage social media legally and profitably, corporations need to establish a comprehensive strategy to govern social media interaction.

For instance, a business could face regulatory issues if a bank employee marketed or misrepresented the value of a potential investment on social networks. Likewise, if an employee defamed another fellow employee, or a client, on a social site, this could raise legal issues for the company. Also, a pharmaceutical company could run into litigation issues if an employee denigrated a product on a social site that the company is actively promoting with advertising on traditional channels.

Autonomy is uniquely positioned to provide a platform that enables organizations to take advantage of the power and business value of social networks, while also maintaining compliance. Autonomy’s Meaning Based Computing platform recognizes concepts, patterns, and relationships in unstructured information. Autonomy applies this understanding – which is particularly important given the conversational form of communication on social networks – to its archiving, policy management, supervision, and analytics technologies. As a result, Autonomy Social Media Governance automatically identifies content and conversations on social networks that less sophisticated keyword search technology would miss, and enables a corporation to tie these insights directly into a company’s existing compliance infrastructure.

This information can be stored in Autonomy Digital Safe, a massively scalable, hosted archive service that enables customers to outsource the storage and management of email messages, rich-media files, audio and video files, instant messages, and web content. Compliance officers, lawyers, and investigators can use Autonomy Social Media Governance, a comprehensive policy management and analytics application, to gain a real-time understanding of their compliance status. Autonomy Social Media Governance’s intuitive and easy-to-use dashboards combine data from all customer-facing channels, including email, audio, video, IM, web content, as well as social media, giving businesses a comprehensive view of their compliance risks across all channels.

“Social media is now a vital way to communicate and engage with customers in a positive manner to grow your business,” said George Tziahanas, Vice President of Compliance at Autonomy.“However, like every other customer-facing communication channel, regulated businesses need to govern, social media interactions pertaining to its company, products, or employees on social networks. Autonomy is the only company that can provide the necessary conceptual understanding of social network conversation, and tie it into an organization’s existing compliance and governance infrastructure.”