Beginning about 2005 electronic messages began to include social media that included user-generated content such as blogs, discussion forums, posts, chats, tweets, podcasting, pins, digital images, video and audio files.
[1][2] Archival of electronic messages has become a concern in modern society as regulations and compliance requirements for businesses have become more prevalent with notable Congressional acts, such as Sarbanes Oxley.
[2] Several large corporations lost significant amounts of money because of their failure to meet these compliance requirements.
Morgan Stanley had a $1.45 billion judgment against it and Merrill Lynch was issued a $2.5 million fine because of its inability to reproduce e-mail transmissions.
Because of growing concerns of similar repercussions, major corporations are implementing electronic message journaling to meet compliance requirements.
Which messages and the kind of information that is captured should be defined by a system administrator or compliance agent.