Privacy in the Face of BYOD: Challenges in Carefully Managing a Mobile Recording Solution

Recording of mobile phones produces a unique emotional response well beyond that of monitoring turrets, IMs, e-mails and trading desk activities. Those are simply the cost of doing business, but when you add mobile users react in an arguably non-logical way, even if that phone was given by the institution.

Factor in Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) protocol and the situation is a bit stickier. Many users have asked to make recording optional, with a button to turn it on and off. But if you allow a user to select if a call is captured, is it not a self-defeating protocol?

Another option is putting two number on a device -- business and personal -- in which corporate gets all the business number billings. "There's really no good answer for BYOD and recording," says Paul Liesching, Senior VP of Truphone Mobile Recording, a provider of global mobile recording solutions. "We think the best answer is duel numbers, the only other option a bank has is to give corporate devices."

The mobile recording competitive landscape in the US is also an interesting one, he adds. In the US the major mobile network operators have around 40-50 million connections and find it difficult to justify a business case to enable mobile recording in the network. As a result, Liesching sees US firms taking an app-based approach in handsets.

[For more on apps versus network recording, read:Lessons on Mobile Recording Adoption from the UK]

"These work, however the experience in the UK around apps has been a negative one. There are huge issues around applications to control voice that reduce functionality, and running applications across all devices is very difficult… Ultimately it hasn't worked out in the UK, but still not everyone is looking into network recording. In the US, they look at apps. We tell them about UK experience, that in-network is more transparent, and doesn't impact usage or functionality."

Additionally, firms face tough decisions around who needs to be recorded. Getting handsets, recording numbers and publicly implementing mobile rules needs to be managed very carefully, Liesching explains. "It's within the bank's ability, it's been done before, but it tends to involve people who haven't worked together in the past. Such as a CIO, compliance and technology departments that traditionally haven't had to collaborate." Becca Lipman is Senior Editor for Wall Street & Technology. She writes in-depth news articles with a focus on big data and compliance in the capital markets. She regularly meets with information technology leaders and innovators and writes about cloud computing, datacenters, ... View Full Bio