“We are building the future of telecommunication, and what does that mean?”
When recently asked about Clerk Chat’s superpowers and how it differentiates itself from other communication platforms, co-founder Alex Haque shared his forward thinking views about Clerk’s ability to enable a multi-channel approach for businesses to send and receive text messages.
Clerk Chat is the ultimate messaging platform for teams looking to stay connected and on top of client and customer requests with real-time, two-way messaging from anywhere. The platform ensures compliance with the latest messaging requirements and laws.
Speaking of which, one of its most recent integrations, with Global Relay, has made it even easier for its customers to prioritize compliant business messaging.
And if you’re wondering why SMS compliance is important for your business? There’s a laundry list of reasons. But just for a moment, we’ll focus on two: it’s one of the steps to protect your business from legal repercussions, and it safeguards customers’ privacy, ensuring that they receive messages that are relevant and helpful to them.
So, let’s pull it together.
Why Compliance Matters
Compliance for business communication is critical for any organization. It’s so important to make sure you’re adhering to regulatory requirements and industry standards, to mitigate risks and avoid penalties. And, in the case of highly regulated industries like finance or healthcare, non-compliance can lead to consequences that any company doesn’t want to encounter.
And, if you’re a government entity tasked with safeguarding sensitive information, compliance is even more critical.
The Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) mandates that government entities adopt a risk-based approach to information security. This means implementing security controls and security assessments. Failure to comply with these regulations can lead to serious fines and penalties, posing a significant risk to your reputation.
Big picture? Compliance helps protect sensitive information. So, if you’re responsible for handling personal data, financial information, and classified documents, then keep it safe, because otherwise, you’re opening the door to potential data breaches, cyber attacks, and the compromise of sensitive information. And you don’t want to be responsible for any of it!
Understanding Global Relay
Founded in 1999, Global Relay stands as a prominent leader, providing businesses with a platform designed to meet the evolving needs of regulatory requirements. Its core management team remains united after more than 20 years.
Specifically crafted to empower organizations to securely capture, archive, and monitor electronic communications, Global Relay ensures regulatory compliance and risk mitigation.
Over the years, the company has expanded its solutions to serve a diverse range of industries, including asset management, insurance, energy, government, public companies, and other regulated organizations.
And in case you’re not already aware, here are several key features:
- Communication Surveillance: Identify areas of concern by flagging high-risk content. Review, identify patterns, take action, and document.
- Connectors: Archive business communications, including voice and data, across any channel such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom, with Global Relay’s Connectors.
- Archiving: Stay compliant by properly and securely storing your data, including emails, text messages, and more, and importantly, manage access and retrieval of archived data.
- Secure Storage: Global Relay uses state-of-the-art security measures to safeguard archived data, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive information. Also worth noting, its user-friendly interface facilitates simple (and fast!) retrieval of archived data.
- eDiscovery: In the event of legal proceedings, internal investigations, or audits, Global Relay simplifies the process.
- Scalability: Whether a small startup or a large enterprise, Global Relay caters to businesses of all sizes. Its scalable architecture adapts to the evolving needs of organizations, ensuring that compliance solutions remain effective as businesses grow.
Compliance Challenges for Collaborative Platforms
Microsoft Teams has become a go-to platform for businesses worldwide. One of the most significant compliance challenges for companies using collaborative tools, like Microsoft Teams, is eDiscovery, short for electronic discovery, which is the process of discovering, collecting, and analyzing electronic information.
eDiscovery is typically part of legal proceedings or investigations when there’s a need to produce electronic documents, like emails, text messages, databases, etc., as evidence.
Some of the key steps in the eDiscovery process may include:
- Recognizing and preserving potentially relevant electronic data to prevent its alteration or deletion.
- Gathering the identified electronic information from various sources, such as servers, computers, cloud platforms, and mobile devices.
- Organizing and filtering collected data to remove duplicates or irrelevant information.
- Evaluating the processed data to determine its relevance to the legal case.
- Presenting the relevant electronic information as evidence during legal proceedings.
Producing these electronic documents can prove challenging in Microsoft Teams where relevant content can be distributed across teams and channels. It’s also important to frequently monitor security, permissions, and any added guests that are external to your organization.
Take the time to explore how your company is meeting any necessary compliance regulations or potentially what it could do differently.
If you’re using Clerk Chat within the Microsoft Teams environment, you have the option to export logs and/or connect with Global Relay. There are ways to archive conversations and ensure data security.
Clerk Chat and Global Relay Integration
Whether you’re a current Clerk Chat customer, or not, connecting your account to Global Relay is simple with our integration.
- Once registered and in our user-interface, navigate to Settings, and then Integrations.
- You’ll notice Global Relay as an option and you simply click Connect.
The integration is smooth. However, we do recommend you familiarize yourself with Global Relay’s plans and policies.
You also have the option to automatically export SMS messages to Global Relay via Clerk.
In order to do so, you’ll need to:
- Obtain access to Global Relay.
- Connect to Clerk SMS data sources.
- Configure data extraction and transformation.
- Map the data to Global Relay.
- Enable a Clerk automated workflow or schedule to periodically export the SMS data to Global Relay.
Although there are more specifics involved, the Clerk support team is available to assist.
Global Relay is built for compliance. So, if you’re using SMS for your business communication, integrating with Global Relay will help you mitigate risk and ensure compliance.
The TL;DR - Compliance Simplified
We’ve compiled common questions about Clerk Chat’s integration with Global Relay, making it easy for you to quickly find the answers you need.
Why should I integrate Clerk Chat with Global Relay? It’s simple: seamless communication compliance, secure storage, and enhanced collaboration. Stay compliant and connected.
Is the integration user-friendly? Yes, the integration is designed to be user-friendly. Connecting your Clerk Chat account to Global Relay is a simple process under Settings and Integrations.
Can I integrate if I’m not currently a Clerk Chat customer? Absolutely! Whether you’re an existing Clerk Chat user or new to our platform, integrating with Global Relay is straightforward. If you don’t already have a Clerk Chat account, creating one is simple via clerk website.
What benefits does Global Relay’s archiving offer for business communication? Global Relay’s archiving ensures compliance by securely storing various forms of data, including emails, text messages, and more. It also facilitates efficient access and retrieval of archived data.
How does Global Relay help in mitigating risk and ensuring compliance? Global Relay identifies high-risk content through communication surveillance, reviews and documents concerns, logs every step of the supervision process, and generates reports for complete visibility and oversight.
How does compliance with SMS benefit my business? SMS compliance is crucial for protecting your business from legal repercussions and ensuring that customers receive relevant and helpful messages. Think: business reputation and customer privacy.
Does Global Relay cater to businesses of all sizes? Yes, Global Relay’s scalable architecture adapts to the evolving needs of organizations, making it suitable for both small startups and large enterprises.
Navigating Compliance and Connectivity
2024 is just around the corner, and quite possibly, by the time you’re reading this, it’ll already be here. If you’re not already using SMS to communicate with customers and clients, it’s likely you will be, and Clerk Chat is built for modern business communication, facilitating real-time, two-way communication for teams worldwide.
Clerk not only ensures compliance with its SOC2 Type2 certification but also makes archiving easier for businesses with its recent integration with Global Relay. Connecting your account to Global Relay will help you identify high-risk content and securely store data.
Make data security a priority. Protect your sensitive information from potential breaches, cyber threats, and the compromise of critical data.
Interested in learning more about Global Relay or getting started with Clerk Chat? Schedule a demo to discover how to enable compliant messaging for your business.
